


Prior Engagements

by PlaidAdder



Series: Wild About Harry [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, F/F, John is a good parent, Johnlock - Freeform, Light Bondage, M/M, Near Future, POV Harry Watson, POV Janine, POV John Watson, POV Mary Morstan, POV Multiple, POV Sherlock Holmes, Parentlock, Past Character Death, Rachel Watson - Freeform, Sherlock is a Good Parent, Sherlock is a Mess, Strong Female Characters, action adventure, agra, mary is really not a very good parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-02 06:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 123,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10939155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: Years after Mary melted into the darkness, John and Sherlock are at their wits' end. Rachel Watson, aged nine, is about as difficult as you might expect a child raised by Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to be. But life is no picnic for Rachel, either. John won't even talk about her mother; and ever since Uncle Mycroft was assassinated, Sherlock just hasn't been himself. It doesn't help that the British government is in the hands of a gang of corrupt criminals. John finally decides that the right boarding school might give Rachel the structure she seems to need. It's not until Rachel disappears that he and Sherlock realize that someone else has had the same idea.****"Prior Engagements" works as a stand-alone story, but it is also a sequel to my post-S3 fixit,"Law Like Love."It takes place about nine years after "His Last Vow," but it isnon-canon compliant and written as if S4 never happened.Mary's still alive, Mycroft's not, Redbeard really was a dog, and Eurus does not exist. Baby Watson's name is Rachel and not Rosamund Mary.





	1. HECATE HANDFUL

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY ONE**

My name is Rachel Watson. I'm nine and a quarter years old. The quarter is an approximation. Actually I am nine and five-twelfths years old, but if you say that to grown ups they laugh and say _isn't she precious_ as if you're not even in the room; and if you say it to another child, the child laughs in a nastier way and then usually the child goes and finds another child and then you are in for it. Either you're a grownup or a child, so I am nine and a quarter years old as far as you're concerned and that's precise enough for most people.

My dads have set up this blog for me. Helena suggested it. She says it will help me incorporate my more extraordinary experiences. When she says things like that Sherlock looks away and makes that noise with his teeth, but my Dad nods as if he means to say  _oh yes of course I quite agree I was about to say so myself_. I don't think Dad understands half of what Helena says but he always pretends to. He had a therapist too, years ago, before he met Sherlock, only her name wasn't Helena, it was something else. Sherlock calls her the potted plant. As in, "At least Helena is doing Rachel some good, unlike the potted plant."

Sherlock is my Dad too, but I call him Sherlock instead of Dad when I'm talking to other people, a category which includes you, Gentle Readers. I do that because I'm working on controlling my impulses, and nothing makes it harder to control my impulses than some little beast asking which of the men who walked me to school that morning is my "real Dad." What they actually want to know is which of them provided the sperm. This is a factual question and a legitimate object of inquiry. But they don't ask the factual question; they ask the question that makes it seem like the one whose sperm was not required is not really my dad, and then the impulse to step on their feet or pull their hair or pinch them or just get close to them and scream at their stupid faces becomes very strong. Controlling impulses like that is quite difficult. Helena says I am making a lot of progress. 

Since this is my first story for this blog I asked my Dad for advice. He's brilliant at stories. My Dad says it's important to let everyone know right away that I'm All Right Now. Sherlock says why? My Dad says, people don't like reading stories where children get hurt. Sherlock says is it your position then that Rachel was not harmed by anything that took place during this little adventure? Dad says you know what I mean by hurt. Sherlock says it's not true anyway, people will read anything that stimulates them. My Dad says not my readers and now they're fighting but it's just play-fighting. They play-fight a lot and it's fine and it's funny. It's quite different from when they're actually and truly fighting. You would know the difference instantly if you could hear them. I always do.

They will be play-fighting for a while, so let me just say: I am in fact All Right Now. Helena is not really because of what happens in this story; she's because of Things. There are these Things About Me, ever since I started school. I'm brilliant at reading and getting better at writing and fantastic at maths and Sherlock says I have quite an aptitude for chemistry and Molly has been teaching me some lately in the evenings, but one thing I am not good at is being a child. I do not treat adults with respect. I don't like to Ask For Help. Dad always says that if I had a coat of arms the motto would be "I Want To Do It MYSELF." Also I'm very Sudden. As in, I might be doing a very simple maths problem and it occurs to me that if instead of dividing the big number by the smaller one you divided the smaller by the bigger it would turn into a repeating decimal that would repeat FOR EVER and I see all the 6s dancing along in a big conga line after the decimal point and they dance just like my Aunt Harriet who's gotten very hippy in the last few years, it's all right to tell you so because she would tell you so herself, and it's so funny that I might give a kind of jump in the air and a big laugh all of a Sudden. And then the teacher for example might tell me to hush but it's still funny so I carry on laughing and all of a Sudden I'm defying my teacher and there's another email going out to my dads that afternoon with little red arrows next to it. So then I try just to see the actual numbers instead of making them dance but that gets very boring, and when I'm bored the chair seems really hard, and I might discover all of a Sudden that instead of the numbers dancing it's me dancing and someone has been telling me to stop for the past forty seconds but I'm only hearing it just now. And it's unfair for them to already be angry with me when I only just heard them just now and when I think about how unfair a thing is I start to feel a bit like a kettle on the boil and then the steam might come out all of a Sudden. 

I can't tell the whole story because I was not there for all of it. Dad said just to tell the parts I remember and the rest will take care of itself. I said, you should tell the rest, or Sherlock or Aunt Harriet, and he said but it's your blog, and anyway I am pretty certain that none of us actually knows the whole story. 

Dad said to start with the kidnapping because that's the beginning of the Action. Aunt Harriet said to start with the Backstory. I said but then I will have to start before I was born and I wasn't there for that part.  Then Dad said not to take writing advice from anyone who thinks  _Bleak House_ is a masterpiece and then _they_ started play fighting. Sherlock said to start with the first step in the logical process. I think that's the axiomatic thing to do so I'm going to start six months back when I was only eight and eleven-twelfths, and still attending The New Circle Day School. 

It was clear quite early on that this particular day was not a Good Day. The thing is that when it's cold out I don't want to get out of bed. That flat is very badly heated and my room is the worst. I showed Mrs. Hudson once that if she would put in central heating she could put up the rent and make the money back in a year. Mrs. Hudson just said oh dearie you've no idea of the bother involved I wouldn't have been able for it even when I was ten years younger and besides I haven't put your dads' rent up in five years, but aren't you a dear to do all that work with the calculations. I asked her why not. She just sighed and said something about being a sentimental fool and how it was the story of her life and they would write it on her tombstone if by that time she could even afford one and then she went for that little bottle she pours into her tea, and at that juncture I thought it was time to go back upstairs. 

I wanted to stay under the quilt because it has all the planets in the solar system plus Pluto on it, so it's like the whole solar system is giving you a hug, which is a good thought to warm yourself with when you can feel that it's going to be a Bad Day. The third time my Dad came in and told me to get a move on because we had to be punctual for once, I said why what for, and there was a bit of arguing and then I heard Dad clomp back into the corridor shouting,  _Sherlock, Rachel wants a twenty-five step logical proof of why she should have to get out of bed in the morning, will you please give it to her because I'm obviously too stupid to invent one that's sufficiently convincing._ There is a particular way he says these things that feels like a spike being pushed into your back and when I feel that sometimes I cry and then when Sherlock comes in and sees me crying his hands do this thing that looks like he's pushing the noise away and then I cry louder because he doesn't want me or my noise and then Dad comes back in. And sometimes Dad sits down and his voice gets very soft and he says it's all right, come here little fox, and then I go and curl up with him and Sherlock sits next to us and will sort of pat me on the head as if I really were a wild fox and I bark a few times and then after that everybody's all right and we can all get up and get on with it.  _  
_

But if there's a Bad Day wind blowing, then Dad comes in and sees me crying and Sherlock pushing the noise away and says  _Christ!_ or something else very loud and very sharp. Then I shout back at him that it's not my fault, and usually what happens is both of them leave and I get dressed in my room and listen to my Dad stomp around the house waiting for me. So that's what happened this time and I came out to breakfast and it was toast and jam for the third day in a row and Dad said, don't look at me like that, if you want an egg you have to get up more promptly.

By the time I had my coat and everything else on and Dad was walking me to The New Circle Day School he was saying I'm sorry I spoke sharply to you, Rachel, but Sherlock has to be at a press conference by nine o'clock and you know that if I don't take him he won't go. I felt bad then because I knew Dad was trying so hard to get people to like Sherlock again and I said you should have said. Dad said I did say, Rachel, but let's not argue about it now. I asked what the press conference was about. Dad perked up a bit and said Sherlock had done something for Lestrade. It was about a rich banker named Pound who was being harassed by some shadowy organization that Sherlock exposed and broke up. I said it's lucky the man's name was Pound because you wouldn't get far in banking with a name like Pence and Dad laughed and put his big hand on my head and ruffled my hair and said Rachel, you're the best. 

So that was all right in the end. But then I got to school and it was terrible. Right from the very beginning. I got paired up with Eveline Mathers for reading time. Eveline didn't like to read. I think this is why Miss J kept pairing us up, as if my liking to read would pass into Eveline through osmosis. It never did. Instead Eveline got bored and she'd keep the book open on her lap and when Miss J was off trying to stop two of the boys from punching each other Eveline would whisper things out of the side of her mouth like _my mummy gave me this necklace it's real diamonds_ and before I could tell her she's cracked, they're not even real glass, she'd say  _does your mummy ever give you real diamonds?_ and then  _oh I'm sorry I forgot you don't have a mummy_ and when I said _Do you want me_ _poke out both your eyeballs with this pencil_ it was meant to be a whisper but it wasn't.

It is very unfair that when a thing like this happens it's the person who's Sudden who takes all the blame.

At lunchtime when I opened my box there was a hardboiled egg in it and a note that said  _Hope you have an egg-ceptional day! Love Dad._

I stared at it and thought about how he just dropped me off and left me. Every day one or both of them just dropped me off and left me at this place and they had no ruddy idea. My Dad would come and collect me and he'd say  _how was your day?_ and he'd be hoping I was going to say  _oh it was a great day Dad_ but it wouldn't be.This was a Bad Day if there ever was one. He'd see my face and know and he would get that look like he wants to cry but he won't. I wanted to cry too, but instead I tore up the note and shoved it into my glass of milk and I pushed too hard and knocked it over and when I saw the milk splashing all over my hardboiled egg and making it too nasty to eat I kicked the table I was so mad and then Miss J came up to sit next to me. She smiled and said  _What's the matter, Rachel?_  when all she really wanted to do was slap me for making a mess she was going to have to clean up. I said  _I hate school and I hate you_ and I said it very loudly.

Grownups do not like it when you say you hate something, no matter how hateful a thing is.

*    *    *    *     *

Since Rachel started school, John had really come to hate and fear the sound of his phone letting him know he had received another email. It was especially galling now, when he was finally feeling almost happy. For once the press conference had not been a disaster. The campaign of cyberharassment had been much in the news; but more important, identifying and exposing the ringleaders of the CyCommune had been a complex and difficult matter that taxed even Sherlock's skills to the utmost. Sherlock had, therefore, been tempted into betraying geniune interest and roused almost to animation by some of the questions he received about it, especially from the technology journalists. And now they were back at Baker Street, and in the same room, and actually sitting on the same couch. And just as John was noting how thin Sherlock's face had become, and the new lines etched around his eyes, and thinking to himself that the camera was an idiot for not loving Sherlock even  _more_ now, and Sherlock actually looked back and there was a gleam in those eyes that made John's heart start blundering about inside him like a butterfly in a cage--there was his phone, bleating at them.

 _I don't fucking care,_ John said, leaning toward Sherlock's end of the couch, watching Sherlock's eyes get larger and darker and deeper.  _I will not fucking answer it._

The sight of Sherlock's lips beginning to part was something that John now knew he would love for the rest of his days. And the thrill that went through him with the first touch, that never faded. Least of all now, when it had been...how long had it been...

The phone bleated again.

Sherlock pulled back, twisted around, and sank himself into the couch, facing forward. John pulled back. He watched Sherlock's face in profile. The dry hard eye, the lips compressed, the jaw locked tight.

"See what it is," Sherlock said.

"It could be--John began, but his heart was already sinking toward his stomach.

"It isn't," Sherlock cut in.

Sherlock had some kind of sixth sense for these things. John picked up the phone. 

"Well," John sighed. "We've been summoned." 

Sherlock let out a strangled noise of protest and threw himself toward the arm of the sofa, curling up around it and closing his eyes.

"Now?" was all Sherlock forced out.

"Janet wants to see us right after school's dismissed."

From somewhere near the arm of the sofa, Sherlock's voice--so much less agitated than his body--said, "You had better be Reasonable Parent this time."

John was always the Reasonable Parent, but he didn't complain. They both knew he was the only one who could pull it off. Some of the time.

Sherlock heaved himself off the couch. He ran his hands through his hair. He turned, scattering dust motes from his dressing gown. They flashed like tiny spangles in the sunbeams, sparkling through the space where he had been. John watched them, as Sherlock's steps traveled down the hall and through the door to their bedroom. Bureau drawers began opening and shutting. He was choosing what to wear, with as much terrified anticipation as if he were meeting The Woman, and with the gravity of a knight inspecting his armor on the eve of battle.

John loved him for making the effort. It would be wasted, however. John would never be a leading light in the science of deduction; but he did know that a court-martial only ever had one kind of outcome.

*    *    *   * 

**RACHEL'S BLOG, CONTINUED**

By the time we were dismissed and going out the side entrance to be collected I had more black spots on my Behavior Chart than I'd gotten in any one week at any of my other schools. All I wanted was to run and hug my Dad and not let go of him until we were back at 221B Baker Street and having hot cocoa. And then my Dad wasn't even there. It was Aunt Harriet. 

I said  _Where's Dad?_ but then Aunt Harriet glanced over to her left and she glanced back right away but it was too late and I looked over at the main entrance and I saw my Dad  _and_ Sherlock going up the stairs and Sherlock had his coat collar turned up and his hands shoved in both pockets and my Dad was sort of just lightly touching his arm as if he was maybe expecting him to bolt and they were both looking straight ahead of them and I knew what  _that_ meant. When I looked back at Aunt Harriet my eyes felt hot. Aunt Harriet said, come on Rachel, let's go back to my apartment, Hecate's Haven launched today. 

I jumped up and I grabbed Aunt Harriet by the shoulders of that big down poufy coat she wears in the winter and wrapped myself around her and said  _I love you Aunt Harriet_ and she said  _If you really love me, don't call me Aunt Harriet._ And we walked down to the Tube station with me holding her hand and saying  _Aunt Harriet, Aunt Harriet, Aunt Harriet,_ and she did the funny old lady voice and said, "Really, Bruce, I don't see how Dick is ever to keep up with his studies if you keep dragging him off to all these society events!"

So that was brilliant because it meant she was in a good mood and when we got into her apartment and she sat down at the table I tiptoed around behind her and pressed down on her hair which she has standing up now with mousse or gel or whatever, she says since she's gone gray she needs a bit more of an edge, and she didn't tell me to stop it. And then she turned on her laptop and I had to get off the stool I was standing on so I could bounce up and down.

The Hecate Handful books are just brilliant. I read all kinds of books, fiction and nonfiction, but these books are the best. They're about a little orphan girl named Hecate Handful who boards at a school for witches on an island in the North Sea that you can only get to by flying on a dragon. Hecate Handful has red hair just like me and she's so clever and she's always getting into scrapes with her best mates but they're always finding out about mysterious dangers and saving the school from them and so even though they're always about to be expelled it never happens. It's all girls and they learn how to do everything with spells and there's a game called Chickwitch which is like jousting on brooms, you try to knock the other witch off in midair, only you can't play until your third year because you have to master the auto-levitation spell first otherwise it's quite dangerous. I loved the first one, it was brilliant, and then after the second one which was even better there weren't any more because the publisher dropped the series. Aunt Harriet explained. She said it was because the first two didn't sell very well. I said but they're brilliant, why not? And Aunt Harriet just gave this funny kind of sigh and said,  _People thought they were too derivative._ A derivative is something from calculus. I don't know how to do calculus yet but Sherlock showed me all the symbols. But I don't understand what it means in that context. 

Anyway, the author,  H. J. Switsom, she's still writing the books and she sells them herself on Amazon. And she promised after the third one to start up a site for the fans called Hecate's Haven after the floating treehouse she and her mates built in book two, where people who read the books can come and hang out and play Chickwitch and cast spells at each other and make Wing Of Bat Stew and things. And there was a bit of a delay because of legal problems but Aunt Harriet told me once it launched she would let me play on it, under supervision of course. 

I watched her opening her computer and I was so happy. My Dads wouldn't let me use their computers. They wouldn't let me have a phone or play games on theirs. They wouldn't let me do anything like that. They wouldn't let me go online at all if they could help it. Aunt Harriet said, well, it is dangerous, but Hecate's Haven was designed specifically to be safe for kids to play on. I'll help you choose a strong password and a username and everything.

And then Aunt Harriet's phone went off and she looked down at it and then she said, "Oh, son of a bandersnatch!"

Instead of using bad words around me, Harry uses words from "Jabberwocky." If she ever calls you a slithy tove, you should know, it's not a compliment.

"What is it, Aunt Harriet?" I said.

"Decision came down in one of my cases," she said. "The idiot judge split the baby."

"What does that mean, split the baby?" 

Aunt Harriet shook her head. She doesn't like it when I can tell she's sad. 

"Oh, well, you know, like..." she began, and then stopped. "I mean...do you...like...know what the Bible is?"

"Of course I know what it  _is,"_ I said. My Dad has one. I'd read all the Old Testament, in bits, the year before. Some of it I didn't really understand but apart from Leviticus which I skipped mostly it was never boring.

"You know who Solomon was?"

"He's like the Sherlock of the Bible," I said.

Aunt Harriet nodded. "So you know the story about the baby and the two mothers."

Yes. There were two mothers with babies and one of them died in the night and then both mothers said the living baby was hers. Solomon said fine, cut the baby in half and give half to each. The one woman said all right, that's fair, and then the other said no, no, anything but that, the other woman can have her. And so Solomon gave the baby to the second woman because she'd proved she really cared about the baby and so she must be the baby's true mother.

Harry said that to  _split the baby_  meant to come up with a solution that seemed fair in an abstract way but didn't actually benefit anyone and was actually worse than nothing.

"Brother and sister fighting over the family business," Harry said. "Different ideas about how to run it and who it really belongs to. And the judge says it's to be sold and the proceeds divided." She let out a big sigh. "Hand-made custom furniture. It'll be sold for nothing, and whoever buys it will sell it for next to nothing to some big corporation that will take over the brand and sack all the employees and send it all to be done in Indonesia. A business that's been carried on by that family since 1783, and it'll die now. But it's justice because both siblings get an equal share."

And she went to go make some popcorn and I was so happy. I don't know if you are a grownup if you remember what it's like when you've wanted something for so long and you're finally about to get it and it seems like everything is just tingling and beautiful even though it's already after four o'clock and your dads are still at the school.

*   *   *   *   *   *

"We're just concerned that Rachel is not able to take advantage of the learning environment we provide."

John squirmed slightly, trying discreetly to find a more comfortable perch on the hard little plastic chair on which Rachel's teacher had invited him to squat. He was still not sure that they didn't make you sit in these tiny chairs for the same reason people used floodlights at other interrogations. Discomfort, disorientation. Put you at a disadvantage and then torment you till you gave it all away.

"I'm just trying to understand," John said, in his most reasonable voice.

Sherlock, whose long bent legs, unbuttoned dark coat, and black turtleneck and trousers made him look like a very impatient and fretful spider, pushed his tiny chair back a fraction of an inch. The squeal of the chair's four metal feet grating across the floor set everyone's teeth on edge.

Janet Chaplet was not a bad looking woman, John thought. If he'd met her at a bar in the old days, he might have chatted her up. She had a nice face and blue eyes that might at another time give some promise of naughtiness; and she might have a nice enough laugh, when she wasn't as nervous and uptight as she was now. At the moment, however, Miss J's brittle smile and her folded hands and her tidily pinned-up blond hair made her look almost as old as he felt.

"Even her interactions with the other children are very volatile. Her peers seem to want to engage her, but her reactions are so unpredictable, I think they're afraid to."

Sherlock turned his head sharply away from the table. John leaned forward, earnestly. "I quite understand your concerns. I know Rachel can be quite difficult..."

"And then there's her work," said Miss J, pulling over a green folder with RACHEL WATSON written in Rachel's cramped, unhappy handwriting at the top. She opened the folder and pulled out a sheet of paper full of sums.

Sherlock was suddenly focused with laserlike intensity. His eyes began zipping from problem to problem. It was long division.  

"Your daughter is obviously intelligent," said Miss J. "But the work itself is very erratic, and she does not attend well during instruction. Yesterday at maths circle she--"

"Excuse me," from Sherlock.

John felt a splash of acid in his throat. He swallowed it down and tried to brace himself. 

"There is nothing  _erratic_ about this," Sherlock said. "Each of these problems has been correctly solved on the first attempt."

Janet seemed to be much more at home now that someone had done something openly antagonistic. She leaned over the low table at him and said, "I don't deny that, Mr. Holmes, but she refuses to show her work."

Sherlock blinked at her as if he literally had not understood any of the words she had just said.

"If she doesn't show her work," the teacher explained, with false patience, "then I can't know how much of the process she really understands."

There was a clatter. The skirts of Sherlock's coat whirled around the overturned tiny chair as he leapt to his feet and flung out a hand. 

"You know she _understands_ it because she's arrived at the correct answer," he snapped. "I should have thought even someone who believes that everything is improved by putting it in a _circle_ would be able to deduce that much."

"Mr. Holmes," said Janet. John was John; Sherlock was always Mr. Holmes. "Insulting me may make you feel better but it will not help your daughter. It isn't just this. She is not doing well here. Her interactions with myself and the other teachers are almost uniformly negative, and as for her peers--"

"Peers!" Sherlock threw out, turning on his heel. "She doesn't have any _peers_ here."

Sherlock took a few angry steps toward the chalkboard on the wall. Around it fluttered a frame of brightly colored bits of paper decorated with letters and numbers and words, full of cheerful and empty promises. A safe and happy environment conducive to creativity and learning and sustaining of the whole child. That was what the New Circle Day School said it was.

"Show your work," Sherlock muttered. He swung around on the teacher, his eyes suddenly lit up. "Thanks for solving my problem, thanks for clearing out the gangs and the terrorists and the master criminals, thanks for destroying organized crime in this city, only we don't really believe you did it until you explain  _how_ you did it."

"Sherlock," John sighed, passing a hand through his own thinning hair.

"It took me a decade to be fed up with explaining my reasoning process to reporters who can barely work out how to operate their tablets," Sherlock snarled, furious. "If Rachel's fed up with it already, then she's cleverer than I've been, and  _good for her!"_

The teacher sprang to her feet and threw his fury right back at him.

"That is  _precisely_ the sort of attitude that has made Rachel's time here so miserable. She treats all the staff here with exactly that kind of contempt--"

"With all respect, Janet," said John, soothingly, "I do think it's a bit unfair to blame Rachel's behavior on Sherlock. After all, you see more of her than we do on an ordinary school day, and--"

"I have  _never_ been spoken to in my life the way your child speaks to me." The teacher's face had gone a deeper shade of pink. "I am a good teacher. If your daughter has no natural compassion for other people, that is not  _my_ fault."

Now John was on his feet. And he had entirely forgotten that he was being the Reasonable Parent.

"What exactly are you implying?" John said, striving for an appearance of nonchalance.

Miss J folded her arms across the front of her cable cardigan sweater.

It was funny how things panned out, John thought, in the instant before his response. He'd come in here thinking that the goal was to persuade them to let Rachel stay on at least through the end of next term, until they could find another school. The only goal he had in mind right now was to end this interaction before anyone got arrested.

*  *  *   *   *   *

In the cab on the way to Harry's, they had the Conversation again.

"We should never have sent her there," Sherlock said. "I told you. Don't read the mission statement, don't even look at the website. Look at the lino on the floors, look at the teachers' buttons and cuffs, check to see how the custodial staff react when you speak to them suddenly, look at absolutely anything except for the utter rubbish they invent to show the parents."

"You agreed to give it a try," John bit off.

"I must have been mad."

"I think at that point you probably were."

They rode in silence, Sherlock leaning his head against the window. 

"I wish," John said, slowly.

"Don't," Sherlock snapped. 

"I wish you would just consider--"

"There is nothing wrong with Rachel. She's bored out of her skull in that little playhouse for idiot children."

"Look," John said, his voice rising in spite of itself. "We don't know what Mary's pathology was exactly, but--"

"Rachel is not a psychopath, John!" Sherlock shot back.

Well. At least the word, the word that had been haunting him ever since Rachel started school, had finally been spoken.

"I know that, Sherlock," John said, tentatively. "But there are other possibilities...."

"Her peers," Sherlock spat. "Of course her peers are afraid of her, she's got three times the personality and ten times the intelligence of anyone in that building, and I am including faculty, staff, and administration."

"But she is not happy," John insisted. "You know it. I know it. This is the third school she's been miserable in now. We have to consider--"

Sherlock swung around on him, his eyes cold and glittering.

"Being a child  _is miserable,_ John. To _be_ a child is to be unhappy. All you can do about is to grow up."

Sherlock looked, at that moment, like a seven-year-old boy, scared and angry and about to tell off someone bigger and stronger than he was. John felt a lump harden in his throat, around which he could not have squeezed a single word. 

"Sherlock," John finally said, quietly. "Sherlock, not all children are unhappy."

Sherlock refused to look at him. The corners of his mouth were drawn down very tightly.

"It doesn't have to be for her the way it was for you."

Sherlock's eyelashes fluttered. He blinked, several times, rapidly.

"Rachel _can_ be happy," John said, putting a hand on the rumpled elbow of Sherlock's coat. "It doesn't have to be like this."

Sherlock shook his head.

"But we have to do something different, Sherlock," John said. "Because whatever it is we're doing now, it's not working."

John directed his eyes ahead, through the glass partition at the front of the cab. There was a sound coming from Sherlock that he couldn't quite place, a kind of high-pitched but soft squeaking.

When john looked over, he could see Sherlock's back and his hunched shoulders. Sherlock's head was turned away; but John knew now that he was crying.

"Sherlock," John said, putting a hand softly on the back of his neck.

Sherlock turned around. John unbuckled himself and slid across the seat toward him.

With his shoulders still heaving and his arms around John, with one eye on the back of the cabbie's head, Sherlock whispered, "I never expected it. I never expected it."

John stroked Sherlock's hair. It was still dark, still curly, only just beginning to be threaded with gray.

"Which part of being Rachel's dad didn't you expect, Sherlock?" John said, quietly. "That you could love her this much, or that it could be so hard?"

Sherlock just grappled him tighter with those long arms. He said nothing. But it was both. Of course it was both.

*   *   *   *   *   *

Harry stood in the living room, on the other side of the breakfast bar, watching Rachel bang the keys on her ancient laptop. She'd already found some people to play Chickwitch with and the...five of them, it appeared...were having a grand old virtual time. She'd been afraid that she and Rachel would be the only people on that website. Rachel's fidelity to the Hecate Handful books was extraordinary, though of course far from inexplicable. She recognized Hecate as a kindred spirit. Harry had to admit that for juvenile literature they were really not bad novels. They were indeed derivative. But everything was, really.

A key rattled in the door lock. Harry could hear John and Sherlock's voices in the hallway, muffled, but intense. Rachel looked up. All the joy was gone. The round plump little face settled into a stony expression. Her hands withdrew from the keyboard. Whatever was about to happen next, she was dreading it as if it were a march to the scaffold.

This was a thing people didn't get about Rachel, Harry thought. She did not do it on purpose. She hated being in trouble. She hated knowing that Sherlock and John were going to come through that door and they would both be exhausted, and angry, and so very tired.

Inevitably the door opened. And there they were, exhausted and tired but not, apparently, angry.

"Come on, Rachel," John said, gesturing back to Sherlock, who haunted the hallway with his hands in his coat pockets. "LoLo will take you home, little fox. I want to talk to your Aunt Harriet for a minute."

The fact that he wasn't speaking sharply or raising his voice just seemed to make Rachel more nervous. She gathered her things--her tiny coat, her tiny backpack--and walked slowly toward the door. She looked up at John as she passed, and said, "I'm sorry, Daddy."

Rachel threw herself forward and hugged him. John put his hands around her shoulders, and said, "It's all right, little fox."

Rachel detached herself at last, and took Sherlock's hand. John waved them down the hall, then shut the door.

Ten minutes later they were sitting at the breakfast bar drinking tea, and John was saying, "We're thinking about boarding school for Rachel."

Harry's hand clenched on the teacup.

"Why?" she said, carefully.

John leaned toward her, pleading. "Everything I've read says children need...they need stability, security, routine, you know. Same thing every day. They need to know what the schedule is. They need--"

"I'm familiar with the literature," Harry said. She had in fact been secretly reading everything she came across about early childhood development for many years now. None of them had ever wanted to solve a problem more desperately than they wanted to solve the problem of how to make Rachel happy.

"We've tried to give her that, Harry, but we can't. You know what Sherlock's work is like. I try to make sure one of us gets her to school every day but it's anyone's guess who'll be collecting her, and we never really know on any given day how long we'll be..."

"Putting yourselves in mortal danger?"

"It's not mortal, Harry, not most of the time." 

Harry drew breath to argue.

"But the point is, Harry," he said. "She might be happier at a place where she knew what to expect, where she was...secure. She might..."

Harry picked up a spoon and stirred her tea, though she had added nothing to it.

"You're her father," Harry said. "You know her and the situation better than I do. I mean...if you want my blessing, well, you can't have it, you know what my experience was like. But I won't try to talk you out of it. I know..." Harry opened her hands, then put them down on the counter. "I know you've tried everyhing."

"Well," John said. "Not everything. Sherlock still won't hear of having her evaluated."

"I'm not surprised," Harry said. "God knows how many bogus diagnoses he picked up along the way. Well, look, John, we agreed I wouldn't give you advice any more, so I won't. Good luck finding one and I hope it works."

John shook his head.

"You don't need my approval, surely," Harry said, sipping at her now-cold tea.

"No," John said, with difficulty. "I need your money."

Harry set down her teacup.

"I mean Rachel's money," John said, embarrassed. "We'd have to go into the trust."

Her first impulse was anger, but it turned very quickly into sadness when John lifted his face to look at her.

"I thought he was doing better," Harry began.

John let out a clipped half-laugh. "Of course he's doing better, Harry. He could not possibly be doing worse. He's working, he even did a press conference today, but..." John picked up a sugar cube and dropped it into his tea, watching it dissolve. "For the two years after Mycroft died he didn't take a single paying client. Even now I can't talk him into...you know...bread and butter cases. And people don't like it that it was never solved. You know. Boffin Sherlock At A Loss Over Death in the Family. Hat Detective, Solve Thyself. It hurts public confidence. It hurts _his_ confidence."

Harry watched John look down at his tea in defeat. Scalp was beginning to show through the still-blonde hair on the top of his head. Harry had never mentioned it.

"To hear Sherlock tell it," Harry began.

John nodded, miserably. "I know. Not unsolved. Just unresolved."

Harry could still remember Sherlock saying it to Lestrade, in those hideous first hours afterward. "There is no  _case_ here, Lestrade," he'd snapped, suddenly, after twelve solid hours of silence, which he had preserved despite John's increasingly frantic entreaties to _say something_. "There is no  _mystery._ Straightforward political assassination. Inside job. I wouldn't even bother opening an investigation. You won't find anything. May as well rule it a suicide straight away. True, both shots were to the back of the head; but these technical matters are unimportant to most Britons when the Greater Good is at stake." She still had the text saved on her phone that John sent her two weeks afterward. WELL THE GOOD NEWS IS, SHERLOCK IS FINALLY CRYING ABOUT IT. THE BAD NEWS IS, HE CAN'T STOP.

"Are you...?" Harry began, gingerly. "I mean...if you're...Sherlock's parents could..."

John shook his head vigorously. "Alfred's not mentally competent and Marian...oh, Marian." John leaned his head wearily on one hand. "Marian insists he's not really dead. Says he's playing at it, like Sherlock did."

"Still?" Harry said.

"Still. His parents can't help, they can't even take care of themselves, really. They're in assisted living now. It's sad."

"But your writing," Harry said.

John grimaced. "Never give anything away for free, Harry. Once you do that it is very hard to get them to pay for it. All sorts of traffic still on that blog, and no revenue whatsoever. Sherlock could have done endorsements, before, but he wouldn't. I could have sold advert space on the blog, but I didn't want to, and now it's too late. The business model was, the blog advertises Sherlock and then he makes the money. Keep him in the public eye, keep the cases coming. Well, now we're barely making the rent and the school fees and...and he's not himself, Harry," John continued miserably.  "He's still not."

Harry wrapped both hands around the teacup, wishing there was still something in it that could warm them.

"You can have the money," Harry said, finally. "It's for Rachel, after all. If it would really make her happy I would sign it all away to you right now."

John nodded, and snuffled a bit, and did not say thank you.

"Funny," John finally said, when he could look up at her without crying. "Turns out you were the one who made good. Steady job, money in the bank, ten years sober. Mum and Dad wouldn't ever have believed it. You won."

"Yes," Harry said sardonically. "I have a job and I own my flat. And all  _you_  have, poor sod, is your true love and that absolutely wonderful child."

John coughed up a laugh, at least.

"She is wonderful, isn't she?" he said. 

"Absolutely," Harry answered.

"Why is it people don't see that?"

Harry shrugged. "People will. Some day. Let's hope, soon."

She pushed her tea aside. One hand popped open her laptop. On the screen, they could both see a frozen image of a rather crudely simulated red-haired witch, feet up and head down, falling from her broom. On her little pixelated face there was the most comically overstated frown of dismay.

John was inspired for a moment with something almost like eagerness. "Oh! Today? And how'd it go?"

"Rachel loved it," Harry said. "The Potions and Notions page gets hung up a lot and the Chickwitch Fights crashed the browser a few times but I'd say it's functional."

John almost smiled, for a moment, then relapsed into brooding dread.

"You could be doing this at home with her," Harry said. "I don't see why--"

John shook his head. "I want it to be your thing that you do with her. A girl thing. She needs girl things. Besides, our official policy is that she can't use the Internet till she's eighteen."

It had been explained to Harry when the trouble began that her job was to be the person Rachel would talk to when she was too mad at her parents to talk to them. There was a list of things forbidden at 221B that Harry was allowed to do with Rachel, so as to make Harry seem like a fellow conspirator and thus inspire confidences about delicate topics. Sherlock's idea, of course. So far it had worked fairly well, as far as any of them knew. 

"She's made a little friend," Harry said, pointing at the pair of boots zooming out of frame in the upper left corner. "BroomHilde1135. They spent an hour blasting each other off their imaginary broomsticks. It made her happy."

"Well," john said, standing up. "At least something in this world does."

After he went, Harry couldn't seem to do anything for a few minutes except stare at the computer screen. The poor man. There was, Harry thought, no limit to the number of people John would kill if it would help Rachel find a way to be all right in the world. And yet he couldn't do it. The world was the world, and in the past ten years it had only been getting colder for anyone named Watson, or Holmes.

BroomHilde, Harry thought. Trust a Hecate Handful fan to know who Brunnhilde was. Probably they were all misunderstood prodigies, children reading too far above grade level, able to discover things they had no way of fully understanding. 

Harry slammed the computer screen down with a snap. Suddenly it had become too much, the sight of that crude approximation of her red-haired niece, falling for all eternity through an empty sky.

END CHAPTER ONE


	2. THE SMELL TEST

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY TWO**

There will be action soon, I promise, but first I want to tell you about my last night before going away to the Priory School.

You may have heard, if you follow the news at all, that there is a parliamentary inquiry underway now investigating conditions at a half a dozen—seven, precisely—boarding schools in the UK. I’m afraid that is my fault. Well, perhaps that is the wrong way to put it. It is not my fault after all that the people who used to run these schools were letting teachers do what they did to the children who boarded there, or that they let the children who boarded there do what they were doing to each other, or that they told the parents lies about how the food was made or how often the bed linens were changed or whether there were mice in the dormitories. My fault is the part where my Dads showed up at each of these schools for the prospective parents’ tour, and then each of these tours ended with Sherlock ticking off a list of horrible goings-on that he had deduced from cracks in the ceiling or the smell of disinfectant or the state of the Latin teacher’s trousers, while the rest of the prospective parents stood around in a circle holding up their cameraphones with all the little red RECORD lights blinking. You can find all these videos on YouTube now. I’ve watched them all, I think they’re smashing. Mostly you can only see Sherlock, but my favorites are the ones with my Dad in the background, with his arms folded, looking down at the ground and shaking his head. He’s so embarrassed and so proud at the same time. I like that. I watch and I think, if he can be proud of LoLo even while he’s being inappropriate and odd and rude and Sudden, then maybe he can also be proud of me.

Well, the eighth time was the charm apparently. I think the headmaster of the Priory School is about three hundred years old and I am quite sure he does not know what YouTube is. That may account for his not escorting my dads off the school grounds as soon as they were recognized. After the third school visit they had to book the appointments under false names and use disguises and as my Dad always says, your LoLo is brilliant at nearly everything but his disguises are absolute rubbish, Rachel, I don’t know why he bothers. Dad said once that there was only one time when one of Sherlock’s disguises ever really worked, and I said please to tell me the story, but then Dad stopped talking and walked away. When Dad stops talking and walks away it’s either about the Fall or about my mother. Somehow I got the feeling this was both.

My Dads won’t talk about the Fall in front of me. They don’t think I know about it. They also don’t think I read my Dad’s blog, and they don’t think I know how to go into the online newspaper archives, but of course I do all of these things; the only trouble is getting access. Also I have to set the browser to text-only because the pictures hurt my stomach. There is this one photo of my Dad that all the tabloids ran with the SUICIDE OF FAKE GENIUS stories and even seeing just the edge of that photo for half a second ties all my insides in knots.

There’s nothing at all online about my mother. Believe you me I have searched for it. There’s nothing in 221b, either, I’ve been through it all and found some quite surprising things but not a single photo of my mother. When I ask my Dad about my mother there are only two things he will tell me about her: that he was married to her once, and that she gave me up. Sherlock will tell me one more thing about her: that she was Not To Be Trusted. They won’t tell me any of the things I want to know, such as: do I look like her? Was she like me? What was her favorite color? Did she like eggs? Is she why I am Sudden and A Problem? Because even though nobody will tell me this it is quite evident that my mother is A Problem. You can see it from the look on Aunt Harriet’s face whenever I mention her. I did one time ask Aunt Harriet, because you can ask Aunt Harriet things and she will actually talk to you, _why did my mother give me up?_ And Aunt Harriet’s face got very sad and for a long time she just looked out the window and I was starting to wonder if she was really all right or should I call an ambulance because she’d had a stroke or something and finally Aunt Harriet said, _I’ll tell you this much, Rachel: it was not entirely her choice._ And I said what does that mean? Whose choice was it? And Aunt Harriet said, _pretty much everyone’s._ Then I went home and asked my Dad what Aunt Harriet meant by that and then late that night I heard him yelling into the phone and it was three weeks before I saw Aunt Harriet again, and so after that I didn’t ask Aunt Harriet about my mother any more.  

The thing is my Dads would never talk about her and as far as I knew they never thought about her even though I thought about her all the time. Whenever I saw a film I would wonder if my mother would like this film or not, and sometimes she would be there in my head, you know, not like hearing voices but just like me thinking, well Mum, this movie is supposed to be brilliant but it seems kind of daft to me, and then thinking back to myself, _You’re right, Rachel, it is daft,_ and then I’d laugh and I’d feel as if she were laughing with me and it was a nice feeling. When Miss J or Mr. P or Scott or whoever my teacher was would say _have you no manners    did no one teach you better_ I would hear my mother saying _how dare you say that to my daughter_ and then when I shouted whatever I shouted at them I would feel her agreeing with me, I’d imagine her nodding her head at me like, _you go girl._ I had the impression somehow my mother was American. I don’t really know why, except that Sherlock is always making fun of Americans in that sly way of his and when he does it I can imagine him making fun of my mother in just that way.

And here I am talking about her now when I’m supposed to be talking about how I came to attend the Priory School. This is what it’s like. She’s not really anywhere but somehow she gets into everything. I don’t think it’s like that for my Dads or for Aunt Harriet. I think my Dads think as long as I have Aunt Harriet then I don’t need my mother and Aunt Harriet’s the best aunt ever but it’s not the same and I really don’t think they ever understood why. My Dad said once that he didn't really have a dad growing up and he did just fine without one. I suppose he thinks if he did all right with one parent I should do all right with two, even if I am still missing one, and even if my Dad did actually still have his Dad home with him when he was my age. I asked Aunt Harriet one time why Dad hardly ever talks about his Dad and Aunt Harriet said oh don't try to make him, Rachel, John's put our Dad in the box. 

I know about the box because one time I showed Aunt Harriet a keepsake box Dad got me for my birthday and Aunt Harriet looked at it a bit funny and said, "I wonder if that's because he remembers or because he's forgotten." I knew there was a story there and I kind of nagged it out of her a bit I must admit but it seems when my Dad was about five his grandfather died and when they were going through his grandfather's things my Dad found an old tin box with a lock on it and his Dad (my grandfather) said he could have it. Y _our father used to keep all his secret things in there,_ Aunt Harriet said. I said,  _What secret things?_ and Aunt Harriet said  _I don't know, Rachel, they were secret_ and I said  _then how do you know about them at all_ and she said  _Your father hid the box one time and couldn't remember where he'd hidden it and he asked me to help look for it._ I said,  _Did you find it?_ and she said  _No_ _._ So it was not hard to work out what she meant by  _put Dad in the box._ If you put something inside the box where you keep your secret things and then hide the box and then forget where you hid it because you didn't even make a memorandum of the hiding place, it is not hard to see that this is not something you will be bringing up soon in everyday conversation. Aunt Harriet will talk about my grandfather if you ask her, but not for long, and she uses a lot of Jabberwocky words so it's hard to understand her sometimes. I do understand one thing, though Aunt Harriet has not actually said this. Obviously, my mother is also in the box. 

What happened when my Dads told me I was going to boarding school after the Christmas holidays were over is embarrassing to me now and I will not describe it. It’s my blog and I don’t have to. Let me just say that neither of them expected me to take it calmly, and in that area at least I scored a Meets Expectations.

It’s my blog and I can tell what I want to so I will tell you how the night before we were to go to the Priory School I was huddling under the solar system quilt in the dark looking up at the flamingoes on the wall and thinking about how it was my last night in that room and maybe I would never see it again because anything could happen to me out there on the moors and it was all my fault for being impossible and making it so Sherlock couldn’t work and my Dad couldn’t focus and Dad kept saying that it was the best thing for me but since that was clearly not true it could only really be because it was the best thing for them and maybe it would be, maybe they’d have been happier if I’d never been born, it wasn’t really Sherlock’s idea anyway.

And I don’t know exactly when I started crying but I saw the light switch on in the hall and the door opened and it was Sherlock. He was wearing my dad’s pyjamas because he has none of his own. He came in with his big knobbly bare feet and sat down on the end of the bed and I could see he was holding something gray and shapeless but I wasn’t sure what till he handed it to me.

He said, “I know you’re a big girl now, but I thought you might want him just for tonight.”

I knew as soon as I felt it what it was, but I clutched it to my face and smelled it anyway. Sherlock does that too, he smells things, usually to work out what they are but I just like the way things smell and my old toy elephant has the best smell in the world. It used to have kind of smooth leathery skin but all the smooth part flaked off after a while and there’s this flannelly stuff underneath that you can rub against your cheek and it feels soft and warm and it smells just like home. It smells like aftershave and iodine and talcum powder and agar and bookdust and burnt toast and underneath one of the ear flaps there’s a spot of orange juice that was never really got out and it’s citrusy and kind of sour at the same time and I chewed the end of his trunk to bits but it still smells like warm milk that’s gone off a bit but it’s still sweet.

It smelled so good in the darkness that I hugged it tight and forgot about how my dads were sending me away because I’d been bad and I just felt warm under the blankets with Sherlock sitting next to me, just breathing with me, not saying anything.

And then Sherlock said, “It’s curious how important smell is to our brains, and yet it’s the last thing most people ever think of. You ask them to describe something, some cataclysmic event that you would imagine would etch every sensory detail in the neurons of anyone unfortunate enough to witness it, and nobody mentions the smells. They’ll say instead something like _I must have left the burner on_ and when you ask what makes them think so they’ll say _well there was this burning smell_ and of course it wasn’t the burner at all, it was gunpowder. Too many images, too much virtual everything, we think we’re above the olfactory now, it’s for the lower animals, but the _real thing_ , Rachel, _life_ as opposed to the imitation of it, you know it’s real when it passes the smell test.”

Sherlock says these things and they’re always true and he doesn’t need an answer. It’s enough if you just nod a bit.

He put a hand on my shoulder.

He said, “You were only four years old when your Uncle Mycroft died.”

I sat up and looked at his face. His eyes I could see, they were shining a little.

“You might not even remember it,” Sherlock said, and I couldn’t see his face well but he gave this kind of sniff that sounded quite alarming to me. “You couldn’t have had any idea what it actually meant. I remember one day,” he said, and he gave a kind of gulp. “I spent the whole day on the couch in the sitting room. Your Dad tried to talk to me. Lestrade tried to talk to me. Molly tried to talk to me. Harry tried to talk to me. Mrs. Hudson tried it even, though of course she hasn’t the stamina of most of the others. It was as if they weren’t there. Day into night nothing was real and nothing touched me. And then you came out…” He lifted his hand and stroked the elephant’s head, very gently. “You came out in your Princess Pig nightgown, and you handed Elfanant to me. And you said, ‘There, Daddy, Elfanant will make it better.’”

I heard the door open. I could see Dad in the doorway, but it seemed like he didn’t want us to notice him, so I didn’t.

“But Elfanant didn’t make it better,” I said, sadly.

“That’s not the point,” Sherlock said. “That’s not the—I’m trying to—“

My Dad came in and sat down on the bed next to him. Dad put one of his hands over Sherlock’s.

“The point is—you—the point is—I—“

“Don’t cry, Daddy,” I said, and I meant it. I hate seeing Sherlock cry. It doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to back when I was four or five but I still hate it.

Sherlock did not cry. He patted Elfanant instead. He kept opening his mouth and then closing it again.

“Subject verb object, Sherlock,” said my Dad, gently.

“I love you, Rachel,” Sherlock said. “I will miss you more than you could possibly imagine.”

“I love you too, little fox,” said my Dad. “I’m sorry…I hope this will be…”

“I don’t want to go away!” I shouted.

“We don’t want you to go,” my Dad said. “It’s only to…to see…if it’s what’s best for you.” I thought I maybe heard him sniff too. “It’s an experiment. It’ll be an adventure.”

I was going to shout again but I looked at them both and I just realized, it had to be. We all loved each other but we weren’t happy together. They thought I would be happier without them. Maybe they were right. Maybe they were right to send me away, because even though we were all together here now and holding each other and it seemed like if it could be like this all the time then everything would be all right, but it couldn’t be like this because the sun would always come up and we would all have to go out into the world and in the world it was never like the way the three of us were when we were just together. I took a big breath of Elfanant, and Sherlock put one arm around me, and Dad put an arm around me on the other side, and we all just held on to each other, and we all tried not to cry.

“Can I take Elfanant to school with me?” I said, finally.

“Of course.” They both said it together.

I hugged Elfanant tighter and lay down. Sherlock pulled the covers over me and tucked me in. They left, quietly, while I lay there with my eyes closed, breathing in Elfanant’s scent. Wherever Elfanant was, they would be there too. Whatever place I was going to, the smell would make it real.

END CHAPTER


	3. UPS AND DOWNS

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY THREE**

They promised me that the Priory School was beautiful and that was true. It's in Sussex, on the Downs. The Downs are actually a lot more cheerful when it's not January and gray, which is what it was like when my Dads drove me down there for the start of term. The downs just roll away from the roads right to the white cliffs by the sea, big open fields sewn together by little stone walls and hedges. Like a big quilt thrown down on top of a gentle rolling sea. When we got out of the car I looked up at the stone walls and they went up forever. The whole building was divided into these long narrow bands of stone between long narrow windows and there was a steeple shooting out of the very top. The whole thing looked as if it were about to just leap into the sky. 

"Well, it's not WitchWoods," my Dad said, slamming the car door shut behind him. "But will it do, do you think?"

I knew I would hate it when they left but the building itself was exciting. Older than anything in our part of London but it seemed like it had so much life. I wrapped my arms around my Dad and pushed my face into his chest and nodded.

"I feel like I really am at WitchWoods," I said, and we walked up to the entrance hall. "Will I have to show I can fly before they let me in?"

"No," my Dad said, while Sherlock filpped his coat collar up. "No, we've already passed all the tests for you. Nobody had to fly," he said. Sherlock started walking faster, crunching up the gravel drive. My Dad leaned over to me. "We had to convince them we believed in God, of course."

"Why?" I said.

He shrugged. "It's Traditional, you know, the Traditional schools are big on that and of course it's a beautiful chapel so why shouldn't they be."

At a distance the stone looked gray but closer in it was all different colors, gray and brown and a kind of mottled pink. 

" _Do_ you believe in God, Daddy?"

My dad was quiet for a minute.

"Let's talk about that later, Rachel," he said.

The entrance hall was beautiful, such rich dark wood, and the floor was made of little colored tiles making pictures and spelling out all kinds of things. I was so busy with the floor I hardly noticed the people my Dads were talking to, even when they were talking to me. The stairs even were fascinating. Then we left and walked across the slushy courtyard toward an ugly brick building in the back and it was such a shock after the beautiful one that I pulled up short when we got there and this woman I hadn't even noticed, this tall and scrawny woman with gray hair and a gray coat and gray shoes, looked at me as if I'd just done something very unusual and I said, "Why are we going here?"

The lady in gray said, "This is your house. This is where you'll live."

People think it is strange when you cry just because something is ugly. I knew that already. So I just said nothing and we went up the echoing staircase and got to a poky little hallway with narrow brown doors sprouting along the walls everywhere. The lady opened one of them and Dad motioned me to go in. 

It was all right I guess. Not beautiful and exciting like the main building. A couple of couches with very little personality and a television sitting on top of a cheap wood console. I poked around a corner and found there were two doors. The first one I tried led to a bedroom. 

It was hard to take in. It was like a big pink and purple explosion. I realized once I found the walls that they were white, but you couldn't tell for all the posters. All sorts of posters about people I vaguely understood to be famous but didn't really know because I don't really watch TV and I don't really pay attention to popular music. There were pink and purple stickers all over the cheap bureau and a big pink and purple pouf on the top half of the double-decker bed and there was a pile of white and pink and purple and blue fur crammed between the top bed and the ceiling which I realized eventually was a huge heap of plush soft toys and then after I'd looked at it a moment I realized there was actually a girl sitting on the bed as well, leaning back on the plush animals and playing with the very newest tablet phone.

She wasn't looking at me, of course. I could have just slunk out but I thought, I'm making a new start, I must try to do it right.

"Hello," I said.

It was a minute but her eyes looked up from the screen. When she scooted to the edge of the bed and dangled her legs over it they were pink and purple too, because of her striped tights. She looked down at me and her eyelids drooped as if she didn't think I was really worth looking at.

"Who are you?" she said.

Her hair was blonde, almost white, and it was straight and thick and braided just perfectly around the side exactly like Elsa from  _Frozen._ It made me wonder what my hair looked like. Probably more like Pippi Longstocking's.

"I'm Rachel," I said. "I'm new."

She looked back at me. "Obviously."

Here was the part where I thought the other person was supposed to say something about who she was. But this girl just kept looking at my hair, and my jumper, and my jeans, and my slushy shoes. It had not occurred to me before that even though the jumper was lovely and warm and made by my ex-Aunt Janine and I had finally grown into it six years after she made it for me it was in fact not particularly well fitting and the shades of blue she'd used didn't go with denim and my shoes were extra-soaked because I still jump in puddles even though my dads are always telling me not to. It all occurred to me just at that moment, while I was watching her look at me, for the first time. 

Sherlock popped his head in. He was about to talk to me, but then he saw me looking up at the other girl and he looked at her too. He smiled in the way he smiles at people he thinks might have murdered someone and tried to make it look like an accident.

"Hello," he said. Sherlock can sound big and hearty when he wants to. "I'm Mr. Sigerson, I'm Rachel's father. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

The girl on the bed smiled at him. "I'm Portia Smyth-Chudleigh." She flicked the end of her blonde ponytail back over her shoulder and then folded her hands in her lap. "I'm nine years old and I've been boarding in Marian House for two years. Daddy got elected to Parliament and my parents moved up to London but they thought it was an..." She hesitated a bit before going for the big word. "Unsuitable place to raise a child so I came here. Are you in Parliament?"

I thought Sherlock might laugh but instead he said, "As a matter of fact, I am. I believe I know your father, in fact. He crushed the opposition to the All-Island Surveillance Act, didn't he?"

Portia sat up very straight and her voice got even higher. "Yes, he did! Mummy and I were so proud. There shouldn't even be an opposition, Daddy says. Daddy always votes with the government." 

"Of course," Sherlock said, approvingly. "Of course a man of his intelligence would. Well, I'm  _so_ pleased to meet you, Portia, I'm sure you and Rachel will be ever such good chums."

Portia smiled brightly. "Yes, I'm sure we will!"

"Come into the common room, Rachel, so we can say goodbye."

I followed him out. As soon as the bedroom door closed, he took me aside into the corner by the common-room couch and crouched down and said, "Listen very carefully, Rachel. Even if Portia is nice to you--"

"She won't be," I said.

Sherlock nodded. "No. Probably not. My point is, don't trust her."

"Why not?"

"Doesn't move her hands when she speaks except to imitate gestures she's copied from television and film. Plays up instinctively to authority figures. Pathological addiction to pink which indicates unusually poor defenses against cultural messaging and correspondingly weak sense of self. Utterly outer-directed, derives self-worth from the approval of others, will follow the strongest faction in any social situation and sell you in a nanosecond if it will increase her social prestige. Also a habitual liar."

I was now whispering back to him. "Really? Is her father not in Parliament at all?"

"No, he is," Sherlock said. "That's where she--"

"What are you two whispering about over there?" said the grey lady.

Sherlock and I came forward. I wondered if this was why he never had any friends. It must be difficult if you know in advance that you can't trust someone.

Daddy had brought in my cases. He stood there with Elfanant in one hand, smiling at me. He looked miserable.

We said goodbye. It was hard.

After the gray lady left I opened my case. There was a cardboard box on top. I opened it up. Inside there was a brand new tablet phone, just like the one Portia was playing with. There was a post-it on the screen that said, "For Rachel, to stay in touch. Love Dad and LoLo."

My very first phone. I pulled it out and turned it on. I was still smiling down at it when Portia came out of the bedroom.

I looked up. "My Dads gave me a new phone."

Portia came and looked over my shoulder.

"It's got the Block," she said.

"The what?"

Portia pointed with one finger at a little icon in the corner of the screen that looked like a padlock. Her nails were painted silver.

"It monitors your traffic and stops you going to the really interesting sites. It's for parents who want to control what their little children do online. It's for babies."

Her eyes flicked from the phone to Elfanant, who was sitting on the couch next to me. Her nose wrinkled.

"What on earth is  _that?"_ she said, looking at it as if it were a rat.

I glared at her. 

"That's Elfanant," I said. "He's mine."

Portia swung away from me so fast I felt a breeze from her ponytail.

I heard the bedroom door close. I sat there for a moment, breathing hard. Then I tried getting online.

The Block or whatever allowed Hecate's Haven. That made my heart do a little skip. It was all I cared about, really. It was where all my friends were. Well, my one friend. BroomHilde1135. The only friend I'd ever made. Apparently, still the only one I had.

END CHAPTER


	4. BUZZ

**TWO AND A HALF MONTHS LATER, SOMEWHERE IN THE SUSSEX DOWNS**

For this early in March, it was a glorious day. It was the kind of day that had made Janine fall in love with the South Downs in the first place--a jewel-blue sky, just a few of those little clouds, drifting as placidly as the sheep drifted across the hills. Green, red, and gold as far as the eye could see, pasture and poppies and buttercups, all the way to the sea. Down at the end of her five acres, by the low stone wall, the beehives squatted in the sun. Janine had no idea if there were still bees living there. She'd always planned to get rid of them, but it was the kind of thing you kept putting off.

There were rules about what you could do to these old farmhouses, but Janine had managed to get permission to put floor-to-ceiling French doors in the master bedroom. You could fold them back like pleats and walk right out onto the balcony. She sat there now, looking out toward the sea, breathing in the salt smell, scanning the country road, and not touching her breakfast at all. Too many butterflies.

About five years ago Janine had gone through the house and removed all the mirrors. There was still one in the bathroom--one had to know some things, for instance if there was spinach in one's teeth or some new and sinister mole--but nowhere else. It had made dressing for the occasion difficult. She'd completely purged her wardrobe after moving in here, and nothing in her closets reminded her at all of the Harry Era. It was true Harry had always said Janine looked perfect in anything. But she might have been just...being a gentleman. 

To the northwest, where the curve of the road disappeared behind the rise of a hill, Janine thought she saw a shadow. It became a tiny rectangular splotch, identifiable after a few moments as a small hatchback the approximate color of dried mud. Harry's car.

Janine quelled her urge to jump out of the chair and run. It would be better not to seem too eager. Harry must think it strange already, an invitation arriving after four years of nearly no contact. If she wanted this to work at all, she'd have to start casual. Make it seem as if it had just been a whim in the first place, but then after Harry arrived, and Janine saw her again...

While her mind was frozen for a bit, the car suddenly jumped closer, and finally there was a whiff of exhaust as Harry pulled that same falling-to-bits Honda Civic into the drive. It wasn't much of a drive, really--she'd intended to put in pavers, but again, it never happened, and the grass was left to continue assimilating the tired and disintegrating gravel--but Harry very conscientiously lined the car up parallel with the never-opened garage door, and got out.

Good Lord. She'd gone gray.

"Hello stranger," Janine called, leaning over the balcony and waving.

Harry looked up. She was still wearing sunglasses, and from a distance she really looked almost younger; it was such a sharp cut and that leather jacket still fit her. She'd put it all on the hips. Not unlike herself, Janine thought sadly.

"So this is retirement," Harry called up, removing her glasses and shading her eyes with one hand. "It looks good on you."

Janine smiled. She'd done it right, then. On her way down the stairs to the front hall, she itemized the look in case she would need it again: jeans, chocolate suede ankle boots, a white scoop-neck tee under a purple cashmere cardigan. Classic. 

Harry stood on the doorstep, knocking the chalky dirt out of the treads of her hiking boots. Yes, definitely hippier; it happened to the best of them. In the rustic kitchen, Harry dumped her purse onto the oak table, put her hands on her hips, and surveyed the decor with what Janine felt was an overly critical glance. But without saying a word, Harry accepted a cup of coffee. She acquiesced without any great excitement when Janine offered to take her upstairs and give her the tour. It led, of course, through the master bedroom--Janine illustrated its points quickly, as if slightly embarrassed to have Harry in it--and onto the balcony.

"It's beautiful here," Harry said. "I never could see you in the country; but it suits you actually."

Harry took a sip of her coffee and looked out toward the sea. There was, of course, no rush. But moving forward would lessen some of the nervous anticipation.

"It saved my life," Janine said. "Having a place I could be where nobody would... _look_ at me."

Harry nodded.

"I mean it's not as if I'm actually a recluse," Janine began.

"No, I know what you mean," Harry said.

They sat for a moment, looking at the ocean instead of each other.

"It was strange for me too," Harry volunteered. "Though I'm sure not nearly as exhausting."

"I sometimes wondered," Janine replied, with a sigh.

"The strangest thing was that most of the time you didn't look anything like yourself," Harry went on. "They kept changing your hair. Extensions in, extensions out. And photoshopping you six ways from Sunday but never the same way twice. Your face was always like you, the eyes and the smile, but it got a bit lost in all the..."

Harry made circles with her hands to indicate the ever-expanding corona of craziness that had been Janine's media presence, at the height of what her American manager had always called the 'buzz.'

Janine said, wearily, "I don't suppose you ever listened to any of the shite that..."

Harry laughed. The sound of it made Janine feel almost real for a moment, and she laughed too.

"Course I listened to it, Janine, it was unavoidable. During most of 2018 they were playing 'Watch My Back' approximately every thirty seconds on every pop station in these islands." Harry set down her coffeecup, letting her hand drop onto the round metal table between them. "They really didn't need the auto-tune. Your voice is beautiful."

"I should ask you down here more often," Janine said. 

Harry shrugged. "It's not flattery, Janine, it's the objective truth. I always loved it when you sang for me."

This was unexpected. After the breakup, they'd said they would be friends; and for a while, they had been. Partly because of Rachel, who was so attached to Janine and so precious, at age three, that you could hardly stand it. But then there was Robbie, and Robbie and Harry didn't get on; and then Robbie introduced her to his mate in the music business and All That happened. When the crash came, Janine didn't try to reconnect. At that point all she wanted to do was be alone.

But even before All That, Harry had always been very careful not to refer back to their time together. She said it was part of her process. Let go of the alternatives, she said. Janine hadn't quite understood what she was on about but she didn't challenge her on it.

"You silver-tongued devil," Janine said.

"Silver-haired, more like," Harry said.

It made Janine laugh just a bit, despite everything. "Hearing your blarney again makes me wonder why I broke up with you."

"You didn't break up with me," Harry said. "I broke up with you."

"Well..." Janine raised a hand, about to argue, and then ran it through her hair instead. "All ancient history now, I suppose."

They watched the waves glitter in the distance.

"Janine, is there a reason you wanted to see me today, particularly?" Harry said. "The pleasure's all mine, of course. But I do wonder."

Janine sighed.

"I thought it was time," she said, turning toward Harry. "And...and, you know. Step nine."

Harry looked at her. The lines around Harry's eyes were deeper now, and her skin, never glowing at the best of times, was evidently being dried out by the sea air. No, she was not attractive. By the book, she never had been. But nothing about them had really ever gone by the book. In the first flush of infatuation Janine used to think of it as a kind of stealth sexiness. There was nothing about Harry's mouth, or about her hands, that you would notice on a first look. But when you knew what they could do, you would always look at them, all the time, anyway.

"For real?" Harry said.

Janine nodded. Harry's eyes seemed to soften, and the corners of her mouth twitched. 

"Well, you've nothing to make amends for to me, Janine," Harry said, folding her hands on the table and looking directly into Janine's face. "I loved the time we had together, and as breakups go it was comparatively painless. Your drinking didn't seem unusual, at the time; but perhaps I'm not the best judge of what's normal."

Now would maybe be the time to make the move.

"Don't you ever wonder, Harry," she said softly, "if we might have...if we might have given up on it too soon?"

Janine let her hand drift down to rest on Harry's. She picked Harry's hand up, touching it lightly, looking into her eyes.

"I don't, actually," Harry said, as her brows drew together in puzzlement. "I think we let it go perhaps six months too long."

"I think about you all the time," Janine said, gently enclosing Harry's hand in both of her own. "Saturday mornings especially. I miss waking up next to you, and looking over at your face, and remembering the night before..."

Harry didn't seem to be responding, exactly, but she wasn't doing anything to stop Janine from reaching out and gently touching the angle of Harry's jaw with her fingertips. Her nails were a mess, Janine mentally noted. Well, Harry wouldn't care.

"You were the best lover I ever had," Janine said, leaning over to breathe it gently toward Harry's still-impassive face. "The best, the kindest, and the most generous. I've always wished I could have given as good as I got."

Harry looked concerned. "You gave, Janine. I told you that. I have no regrets. Don't you have any."

"But I do," Janine said, and the pain in her voice felt very real. "I have so many."

The tears came. Harry leaned in closer. It looked as if she wanted to brush Janine's tears away; but she decided not to.

"No," Harry said, with a little shake of the head. "You had the life you wanted and deserved to have. Fast and fun and full of excitement and adoration and everything else. My God, Janine, we'd all ride the wheel of fortune if we could, even though we know everyone gets thrown off eventually. You made it through," Harry said, bringing up her other hand to grip Janine's tightly. "You've got your place down here now and you're free and you're rich--" Janine laughed. "And you don't ever have to do anything you don't want to, ever again. You survived it."

Because otherwise she was going to start crying, Janine leaned in and went for the kiss.

Harry was surprised at first, of course. And then it all came back, so easily and so naturally. If only Janine weren't too nervous to enjoy it.

Janine drew back and stood up, keeping Harry's hand in one of hers. Harry remained seated, looking up at her. Janine couldn't read her expression.

"Come on," Janine said, with a smile.

Tugging on Harry's hand, Janine persuaded her to stand. And to follow her into the bedroom, where Janine turned and took Harry's head in her hands again.

"I've missed this so much," Janine murmured, her lips brushing Harry's "Nobody's ever kissed me the way you did."

Harry twisted out of Janine's grasp. She drew back a step, breathing hard. Harry's face was not hard to read any more. It was angry. 

"Harry!" Janine called out, despairingly, but she was already looking at Harry's back. Janine ran down the stairs after her. She caught up with Harry in the kitchen. Harry was staring into the open refrigerator, one arm holding the door wide open and the other arm braced against it. 

"Honestly, Harry, I don't know what's so--" Janine began.

Harry slammed the refrigerator door shut. She banged on the reflective metal surface with both fists, let out a snarl of anger, and then spun around to face Janine. 

Janine's stomach lurched. THIS kind of anger was not something Janine had seen from Harry very often, and not something she relished the memory of.

"What did I do?" Harry demanded, slapping the back of one hand against the upturned palm of the other. "What did I  _ever_ do to you that makes you think I deserve  _this?_ "

"Well aren't we stroppy today," Janine said, as some of her old spirit came back to help her get through this. "I shouldn't have thought a kiss from me would be classified as torture under the Geneva Conventions."

"Don't," Harry forced out. "Please. I of all people should know when you're faking it."

"Harriet Watson, if you so much as  _dare_ to say that again--"

"I don't know what you want from me but for God's sake, Janine, just--fucking--don't."

"Don't what?" Janine demanded. Janine was starting to think that she could actually feel all her nerves, radiating down her spine and into her arms, taut as piano wire.

" _Don't_ tell me you want me when I know you don't,  _don't_ tell me you've been brooding over what might have been when you haven't so much as texted me in four years, and  _DON'T_ tell me you're in recovery when there's half a bottle of chardonnay in your fridge!"

Harry burst into tears. Janine couldn't stop herself from doing the same. Janine brought her hands up to cover her mouth as if she might be able to keep the noise of her sobs inside, but her hands were shaking and it didn't work anyway.

"Just ask," Harry said, still crying. "Whatever it is, you don't have to--I mean--just--What is it? What do you need?"

Janine pulled one of the canebacked chairs away from the oak table and sank into it. She couldn't think of anything to say and she couldn't have said it anyway.

Harry approached the other side of the table, leaning on it with a heavy sigh.

"Are you in some kind of trouble?" she asked. "Do you need help?"

Harry's face, Harry's lined and not-glowing and unappetizing face, was unbearable to her now. Not because it was old and unlovely, but because in spite of everything it still looked trusting and kind.

"Why did you even come here?" Janine cried. "If you don't care for me any more. Why drive all the way down here from London just to reject me?"

At least that stopped Harry from looking kind.

"It wasn't a special trip," Harry said, drily. "I was going to be in the neighborhood, in any case." 

"There's nothing in this neighborhood," Janine shot back.

Harry grabbed a chair, with an air of extreme irritation, and sat down.

"Rachel's new school is about twenty miles from here. John and Sherlock have been down there to visit every weekend God sends, but this week they're in--I don't know--Chicago, I think, something to do with gangsters or dancing girls or I don't know what."

"Dancing girls?" Janine said.

"Or maybe it was dancing boys. Point is, it's my turn to go down to the Priory School and take Rachel off to a bed and breakfast for the weekend and hear about what nasty little beasts all her suitemates are and how she already knows all the maths they're teaching. Then you asked if I'd come see you and I thought why not stop in for a bit and catch up on old times, Rachel still asks after you once in a while. And then I walk into all-- _this_ \--Janine, are you all right?"

Whatever it was that made Harry ask that question, Janine was feeling it very hard right in the pit of her stomach. Janine pushed the chair back and lurched to her feet. 

"Come--" she said, too winded by the crying to finish the phrase. "Come--I'll show--"

"I'm not going back up there," Harry warned.

"Harry--just--just--I'll show you what--just--wait--"

Janine took Harry's wrist and tugged her out of the kitchen, around to the room at the back of the house with the old stone fireplace and the sofas and the plank desk on which she kept her computer. She turned the thing on and sat down on the stool. Harry bent over her. Janine could smell her shampoo. Still using the same brand.

"Look." It was all Janine could force out. Seeing the image on the screen again made her feel cold all over.

Harry looked. On the screen was a photo of Janine, with her back to the camera, out at the back of the house, headed around to the side door to the garage to get out the riding mower. There was nothing unusual about it except for the bright red dot, no larger than the end of a cotton swab, gleaming amongst the dark tresses that covered the back of her head.

"Oh my God," Harry murmured.

"I've been getting one of these a day," Janine gasped. "Different angles."

"For how long?"

"Two weeks."

"Who's sending them?"

"I don't--"

"Was it--I mean--are they attached to emails or--"

Janine nodded. She gulped back a splash of acid that leapt up the back of her throat. Harry put a hand on her shoulder. That became the only part of Janine's body that felt warm. 

"What do they say?" Harry said, quietly.

"They said--they told me to--to ask you down here and to..."

"It's all right, Janine," Harry said. 

"And to keep you here," Janine said. "Until at least tomorrow morning. It was very specific."

Harry dragged over the ottoman from in front of the fire and perched on it. "Do you still have the email?"

"No," Janine gasped. "It...deleted itself, somehow."

"Did it specify today's date?"

Janine nodded. They looked at each other, and Janine saw the moment when Harry realized what Janine was thinking. They'd had so many moments like that, back in the old days, even before they started up For Real. The congealed mass of fear and panic that Janine's insides had become somehow found a way to vibrate with just a bit of a buzz.

"You were supposed to keep me here," Harry said. "So I wouldn't get down there to collect Rachel. So that someone else can."

"I'm sorry, Harry!" Janine burst out. "I'm--not--brave any more--"

"Hush. Hush hush hushushush." Harry knelt down by the stool and threw her arms around Janine's shoulders. Janine rested her head on Harry's shoulder and let the great scalding tears just come.

"You are brave," Harry said. "You told me. When you realized what it was, you told me. Hush."

Harry let go gently and got to her feet, looking out the bay window at the back of the room. She was squinting at the beehives, far in the distance.

"Listen, Janine," Harry said, rapidly. "This is bad. It's very very bad but it's not as bad as it seems. There's...like...no cover in this whole country. The only place someone could have taken that picture from, the only place someone could snipe at you from, is behind the beehives. There's no way they'd hit you. It's too far away."

"But--" Janine pointed at the red dot.

"Photoshopped."

"How do you know?"

"I'm the only legal counsel Holmes & Watson has, Janine, I have heard so damn much expert witness--right. So. You can take a high-res photo from all the way back there if you have a good telephoto lens. But putting a bullet into someone's head is a different story. And no matter how good their laser sights are, the laws of physics still apply. From that far away, the beam would spread out enough, you'd have a red splotch back there the size of an apple."

Janine let out a sigh that seemed to melt all the bones and sinews in her body.

Harry put a hand around the back of Janine's head, stroking the hair protectively. "So we'll just move away from the window, you know, in case. But let's stop expecting to be shot every second and think about what we're going to fucking  _do."_

Janine nodded. She still felt pretty limp, but her legs and arms were starting to solidify again.

"Calls," Harry said, abruptly. "School, sherlock, local police, Lestrade..."

Janine trailed Harry back to the kitchen. Harry looked at the bare and highly waxed surface of the oak table, and lost her mind.

"Where's my bag?" she said.

Janine felt her stomach dropping again. Harry's head darted back and forth. She started hunting about the kitchen like a madwoman. 

"Where is it? Where's my fucking bag? It was just here!"

"I know," Janine said. "I saw you put it there."

The silence that descended on them was too heavy to break. Until, from the front of the house, they distinctly heard the sound of a very old car engine sputtering to life. 

"FUCK!" Harry shouted, tearing out of the kitchen and flinging open the front door.

Janine burst through it a split-second after Harry did. There was nothing in the driveway but low-skimming clouds of chalky dust. Harry's car was already approaching the summit of the nearest hill, headed south.

"My car!" Harry shouted. Her eyes were round as pennies and quite a bit larger. "My--fucking--CHRIST!"

"I'll get my mobile," Janine shouted, darting back into the front hall. She thrust her hand into the pocket of the barn jacket hanging from the hatstand by the door. She pulled out her mobile.

"It's dead," Janine said. "It's--there's no signal. Why is there no--fucking--that's never happened before!"

"Land line," Harry gasped.

Janine led the charge back to the fireplace room. She pulled the receiver out of its cradle. She let out a spectacular curse she hadn't used since she left Ireland.

"It's dead," Janine banged the phone back into the cradle. She threw herself back toward the computer. She tried to check her email.

"Fuck," Harry murmured, as she watched the error message pop up.

"This is--this is--" Janine stammered, flinging a hand at the screen.

Harry grabbed the pad of blank paper by the computer, seized a pencil, and began scribbling numbers on it. Without looking up, she said, "Do you have a car?"

Janine got up and ran to the door that opened into the garage. Harry tore off the scribbled sheet and ran after her.

Harry pulled up short when she saw it.

"Oh my God," Harry said, with a catch her voice. "You kept the bike."

Of course she'd kept the bike. It was the most beautiful gift anyone had ever given her. A sleek, purring, voluptuous thing made of silver and satin, gleaming even in the dim light from the single bulb in the garage ceiling. The battered red truck parked next to it was much more practical. But it was definitely not as high-performance. 

"Take it," Janine said. She grabbed the keys off a peg on the wall. Harry scooped up the helmet and crammed it onto her head. It was too small, but she got it on. Janine held out the keys. 

"What is going on, Harry?" she said, successfully fighting the urge to wail. "What IS this? Who's doing it? Who would want to hurt Rachel?"

Harry grasped the hand in which Janine held out the keys. Each of them took a step closer, their hands still joined.

"I'm telling you this because you need to know," Harry said, as softly and quickly as she could. "Don't tell anyone else because it's a dangerous thing to know. I'm only telling you now because it's obviously more dangerous for you not to."

"Just tell me, Harry," Janine said.

"When Mycroft was killed, that wasn't just an assassination. It was a coup."

Janine gasped.

"The KIP are not a political party, Janine, they are a gang. And Selkirk is not a prime minister, he's a criminal. And from what Sherlock can tell it was a legitimate vote that put them _in_ , but they do not intend to be _out_ , ever again, and they have taken steps to ensure that. Mycroft knew that, and he tried to do something about it, and that is why Mycroft is dead."

"Oh my God."

"I'm getting on this thing and I'm going to the school. You get into _that_ thing and find the nearest person who still has phone service." Harry shoved the crumpled piece of paper at Janine. "This has all the numbers. Call the school, call Sherlock, call Lestrade--not the police, Lestrade, that's his personal number--tell them what's happened. This is extremely important, Janine. Because whoever just drove out of here has my phone and my wallet and all my IDs. If you don't tell people what happened, and something happens to me, that fucker can pretend to be me FOR EVER."

Harry's hand tightened on Janine's. They kissed, hard and fast. They broke apart, Harry springing onto the bike, Janine dragging open the door to the cab of the truck. Neither said goodbye. There was no time and no need. Harry roared away, shooting bits of gravel behind her like comets. Janine slammed the door shut and threw the truck in gear. If I die today, Janine thought, I can die proud. Fuck the rest of it. Fuck it all. There is nothing in the world that matters any more than the people you have loved.

END CHAPTER


	5. MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY FOUR**

In case you have never shared a bedroom with someone whose father always votes with the government, I can tell you, it's no joke. I was lucky one way because Portia was a twit who knew absolutely nothing about current events. When she found out my last name was Watson and not Sigerson and that I had two dads and not one she made fun of me for having two dads and for having one dad who was a loony who told lies but she had no idea who my dads were really because neither was ever a pop star. I did find a sticker of my ex-Auntie Janine on the bureau one day when I was sitting on my bunk staring at things but it was nearly covered over with newer stickers. My ex-Auntie Janine used to be famous but she cracked up when I was about seven and once the tabloids were done talking about her retreating to her secret hideaway to lick her wounds (that's how they always put it) everyone forgot about her. But really, two years is not very long, and I mentioned Janine once to Portia and she just said "Who?" and she wasn't messing, she actually didn't remember. So that shows you how much of a goldfish Portia is.

Which was good because the KIP does not like Sherlock because when the London Eye blew up back when I was five Sherlock went around saying it wasn't Muslim extremists at all, it was somebody named Lord Moran who used to be in prison but wasn't any more, and that the KIP planned it all to keep people from noticing whose hands were picking their pockets, and then he went and said it on television and that's when the Public stopped liking him so much. Portia doesn't know about any of that. But that's the only bit of luck I had at the Priory School. Annelise and Britta in the other bedroom didn't have fathers in Parliament but they were best mates with Portia from before and after a week they wouldn't talk to me, they'd just whisper to each other while I was in the room and then burst out laughing. Dad said don't react at all, they only want to get a rise out of you and Sherlock said if it gets really bad I can tell you how to and my Dad said no, Sherlock, we talked about this.

At first I really loved it when my dads would come down for the weekends. And then it got so when I saw them I would get so mad because they were having a grand old time without me. I was gone and they didn't have to fight with me every morning and night and they didn't have to fight with each other about what to do with me and it was such a relief to them. But there wasn't any relief for me because wherever they sent me I had to be there and I couldn't make anyone like me and the teachers were all so much stricter and I was spending more time in detention than out of it. 

Telling a story like this is hard because you have to figure out when to say things. If you say everything you know about a thing that happened right away there's no story. For instance I just wrote this part just now because it's how I felt then but of course I understand better now why I felt that way. I really want to tell you why it was I felt that way because when I wrote that paragraph just now I felt so sad for me and Sherlock and Dad. I suppose perhaps this is what Helena meant by  _help you incorporate your more extraordinary experiences._ _  
_

But if I tell you that it will spoil some of the Suspense. So let me just say that I was really looking forward to a weekend without them for once. I stood there in the main entrance where the big gravel drive comes sweeping by in a half-circle, hanging onto my little overnight case and feeling the way I felt the first time I was on board an aeroplane. You know how it is, your heart beats so fast because you're flying which you never thought you could do but your stomach is falling right through the floor of the aeroplane like it wants to stay on the ground.

Aunt Harriet's car came putt putt putting down the road toward the checkpoint on one end of the big gravel drive. I felt all fluttery inside watching Clemson the guard look it over. He'd seen it a million times of course because my dads always drove down in it; they don't have their own. I saw him chatting a bit, leaning out of his booth toward the driver's window, and then he waved the car on.

He'd never met my Aunt Harriet but of course my dads had given everyone her picture. Will it spoil things if I say it was really surprising how much the woman driving it actually did look like my Aunt Harriet? She was wearing sunglasses but that was natural enough because it was such a bright day and her hair was cut the right way even if it was too dark. It was a wig of course and I suppose you can't get the exact shade right, you have to chose from what's there. But I thought she really did look just like a Master of Disguise.

The car stopped by the main doors like it's supposed to and I came out, dragging my overnight case. My heart was beating so fast I could almost hear it. Mr. Hodges the doorman opened the rear door of the car and put my case in and helped me into the seatbelt. It clicked and he closed the door and waved at me as the car started moving. 

I looked at the back of the driver's head. From the back of someone's head you can't tell much. Well, Sherlock can, but I'm not Sherlock, even though I think at the time I rather thought I was.

"Hello BroomHilde," I said.

"Hello Rachel," she answered, and kept driving.

I said, "Do you think Aunt Harriet will be very angry about the car?"

"Don't worry, love," she said. "It's only for a weekend."

The car reached the end of the drive where it turns onto the main road. There was another little sentry box there with another guard in it. The driver waved at the guard. I waved at him too, and smiled. The gate went up and the car turned onto the road. It puttered along, between the bare green hills on either side. The driver took off her dark glasses and looked up into the mirror mounted on the windscreen. Her eyes were very bright, and crinkly at the corners.

"I suppose I'm much older than you expected," she said.

"No," I said. "I expected you to be about this old."

I tried to say it casually. I've seen Sherlock do that so many times. He has something really devastating, some big Thing he wants to drop on someone, and the first thing he'll do is give a hint and make it seem like he's not even really thinking about it, like it doesn't matter to him at all, but it makes the other person very very nervous. And then when you drop the Thing they jump. 

"I know exactly who you are," I said.

"And who is that?" she answered, with a little tilt of her dark glasses.

"You're my mother." 

My voice kind of shook. I wished it wouldn't.

She looked up at the mirror again, and it looked like maybe she was smiling. I saw then that she was wearing lipstick. Not so it looked like lipstick, just a bit of pink to make her mouth look a bit fuller and softer and make her look just a bit younger. It was the kind of thing Aunt Harriet might easily have done but which Aunt Harriet would never actually do. I suppose that was the moment when I started to think about what I was actually doing and what I had actually done. I saw how just that one thing said so much about how this woman was completely not at all like Aunt Harriet and I had not noticed it until now and somehow that made me think that maybe I should have told Aunt Harriet about this before I went and did it.

"I knew you were clever."

She said it in a kind of flattering way, but she wasn't looking at me at the time. She was looking into the rearview mirror on the driver's side. 

I turned around to look out the back window of Aunt Harriet's hatchback. The road had been empty when we turned onto it. But now there was someone behind us, riding a big black motorcycle. It was very shiny and very loud and it seemed to be getting a lot bigger very fast.

The tires in Aunt Harriet's car were screaming all of a sudden. The motorcycle swerved out of view. The road was behind us now, perpendicular to our trajectory. Through the rear window I could see the tire tracks snaking along the grass. We'd left the road and we were driving across the fields.

"Face front, love," said my mother. "Make sure your seatbelt's fastened properly." 

The car shook till all my teeth hurt. The grass looked soft but whatever was under it must have been very very bumpy. I rattled and rattled and the car rattled and rattled and the only thing not rattling was the driver. She was bouncing around of course but she was so calm she could have been sitting at a cafe with a cup of tea. 

"Brace yourself, Rachel," she said.

All the tires screamed at once and the inertia threw me forward but the seatbelt stopped me and then the opposite reaction came in and I hit the back of the seat kind of hard but it was soft so I was all right. I turned around to look behind. The motorcycle was approximately ten yards away and still coming.

Of course I knew that if the motorcycle could not stop before it hit the back of the car the person who was on it would be thrown forward at a terrific speed. That is how inertia works, a moving object has a tendency to stay in motion. I was just starting to think about what the body's likely trajectory would be when there was a horrible crunching sound. Something black slammed into the hatchback and the glass cracked up into tiny tiny pieces but it didn't fall in because it was safety glass. And then the black thing fell away once the car started moving again. 

"Face front," said my mother. "Please. It's safer."

But I could not help looking back, even though I couldn't see through the glass.

"You're supposed to stop after an accident," I said. 

The car kept going, straight over the green fields with their beautiful buttercups.

"You're supposed to stop and try to help the person," I said. "And wait for the police."

She reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a little shiny black thing that was about the size of a fifty-pence piece. She pressed it against the dashboard and a little blue light began winking on it.

"Agnes Grace to hub," she said. Her voice was entirely different now. It was not even like a human voice.

"Go ahead, Agnes."

"Code 231, priority gamma. Request cleanup."

"Request acknowledged. Specify action alpha or beta."

There was a long pause. I wondered if the connection had been dropped somehow.

"Action beta," said the driver.

"Action beta understood."

"Understood, hub. Agnes out."

The car went bumping on over the green green fields. I started to feel very cold.

"Where are we going really?" I said, and my voice sounded very small.

She looked into the mirror, and smiled at me again, exactly the same smile.

"Where I always said we were going," she answered. "To check out a new school." 

The car finally slowed down and stopped. 

I said, "You didn't say 'school' just now. You said 'hub.'"

"Don't worry about all that, love," she said. "You won't remember it."

She turned around. In her hand there was a little slim cylindrical object, with an aerosol spray attachment at the top.

"Don't be afraid," she said, and her voice was soft and human again. "You've had a hard few years but it's all over now. It's all going to be so much better. Mummy's here. Mummy understands. Mummy will take care of you."

I really thought that she meant it. Even after everything that had just happened. Which it turns out I would remember. Which it turns out I still remember. Even though, as soon as she pressed the button on that little silver dispenser and the spray touched my face, I stopped for the moment remembering or even thinking at all.

END CHAPTER


	6. DANCING MEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may stretch the boundaries of the teen rating. To be honest, I'm not sure exactly where those boundaries are; but at any rate, this chapter is as adult (in that sense of the term) as this story gets.

**SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER, IN CHICAGO**

 

"Welcome to the Drake. How may I help you?"

Sherlock wasted no more than a brief glance on the tall, slender, fair-haired man behind the reception desk. Nonsmoker, only child, gay as the day was long and in that peculiarly American way--blue eyes, creamy skin, roses blushing every so faintly over prominent cheekbones. 

"I'm checking in," Sherlock said, trying out his American accent. "Name of Donovan."

The placid blue of the desk clerk's eyes was briefly ruffled by a flicker of recognition. "Of course, sir. Mr. Cubitt left us full instructions."

With one eye, Sherlock watched him narrowly as he began creating the key card for their hotel room. With the other, Sherlock watched John wander about behind him, absorbed in his perusal of the excessively opulent chandeliers and ceilings adorning the Drake Hotel's rather vulgarly extravagant lobby. 

The young man behind the desk--Ladd, according to his namebadge; hard to know whether that was the given or the surname--handed over a small white envelope containing two plastic cards. "Room 812, just take the elevators to the left. Do you need assistance with your luggage, Mr. Donovan?"

John had already caught up the handle of their traveling case and was dragging it toward the desk. Sherlock wordlessly handed John one of the key cards. With a brief and inscrutable glance in Ladd's direction, John headed for the lift, the bag trailing behind him. John never allowed anyone else to touch their cases. Even after all this time he had not unlearned his fear of improvised explosive devices. And one could no longer say, these days, that John's extreme caution was unreasonable or unnecessary.

"As you are clearly unconvinced by the alias," said Sherlock, abandoning the accent, "you needn't use it. The knowing innuendo in your voice would be audible half a football field away. I refer to American football, not 'soccer,' although the statement remains true in either case."

Ladd drew in a gently remorseful breath. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Holmes. Sir. Just got a little excited there for a minute. It's all under control now." Ladd took a deep breath, folded his hands on the counter, and cleared his throat. "Will you and your guest be staying long in Chicago, sir?" Ladd asked, brightly. "Do need any help with theater tickets, restaurant recommendations, anything? We have a concierge, of course; but I know the city pretty well myself."

That automatic irritation with which Sherlock responded to any attempt at conversation by a stranger rose up in him. But when he looked at Ladd's almost childish blue eyes, and the unaccountably innocent face which masked what Sherlock was almost certain was an indecent proposal, he was surprised to feel something different. It was now quite a rare experience for him to be regarded, by the hoi polloi, with anything other than suspicion, disappointment, and hostility. Rare, and--he realized--refreshing.  

"No thank you," said Sherlock. "We're here on business."

Ladd allowed himself to look disappointed, though he did not indulge in an actual pout. 

"Tell me," said Sherlock. "Was the official explanation for the London Eye bombing widely accepted in your country?"

Ladd actually laughed.

"Not by yours truly, sir," he replied. 

"I've found that, in England," Sherlock went on, "it has been difficult to overcome the public's touching but misplaced faith in the honesty and integrity of its own elected officials."

"You're in Chicago now, sir," said Ladd, with a faint smile. "We don't have that problem."

Sherlock felt it would be fatuous to smile back; but he did feel a certain lifting of spirits, a gentle stirring of the air around him.

"Is there anything else I can do to make your stay more enjoyable?" Ladd added, hopefully.

Sherlock looked at him. 

Before the Fall, Sherlock had always thought of his own celebrity as John's project. John created it; John maintained it; John invested in it; John worried over it. Sherlock, himself, had found it at best an irritant and at worst an unbearable encroachment upon the fortifications with which he had so carefully surrounded himself after discovering--at about Rachel's age--that his nature could not sustain the shock of frequent human contact. After his return, he had fancied that he was bearing up bravely, graciously even, under the renewed and magnified media onslaught. The fact that he had not appreciated the public's affection until after it had been withdrawn was, he remarked, merely his own private iteration of a universal tragedy: one did not, to quote that dreadful folk singer that Molly could not stop herself from listening to, know what one had got till it was gone. Sherlock hadn't noticed how important the admiration and affection of total strangers was--not to John, not to Lestrade or to Harry or to any of them--but  _to him_. He had not understood that the confidence which everyone misread as arrogance, the ability to be swift and sure, the foreknowledge that every deduction he made would be correct and every action he took would succeed, that he could face death in a thousand forms and always emerge from the fray with barely a scratch...that all of this was somehow supported and maintained by his knowledge of that unspecified but substantial number of people out in the wilderness who believed he could do no wrong. That was only one of the many unpleasant truths he had confronted, with nausea and dread, during the sickening readjustment of perspective caused by Mycroft's assassination.

It was still more sobering to discover that even such a brief and irritating encounter with one of the last remnants of that insufferable mob which styled itself his "fans" was adding blood to his veins and sinews to his limbs and nerving him to consider exploits that he had, for months and even years past, never dared attempt.

Ladd had asked if he needed anything.

Sherlock looked back at him, and nonchalantly named the item.

Ladd hardly even blinked.

"Not a problem, sir," he said blandly. "I'll have to send out for them, but it shouldn't be long. I'll have them sent up when they arrive. You prefer the more--realistic style--"

"Correct," Sherlock said curtly. "And please don't add this particular expense to Mr. Cubitt's bill."

Ladd shook his head. "No need, sir. Enjoy your stay."

"Thank you," Sherlock said. "I'll do my best."

Americans, Sherlock thought, as he entered the lift. They might be appallingly stupid and bestially ignorant; but as far as customer service was concerned, nobody would ever touch them.

It was, in fact, only forty-three minutes before there was a discreet knock at the door of room 812. Sherlock was staring at his computer screen, trying for the three hundredth time to make sense of the most recent video file forwarded to him by the increasingly anxious Hilton Cubitt, and trying to forget that John was in the bathroom, writhing under the brutal caress of one of those water cannons the Americans called a 'shower.'

Sherlock was glad enough to abandon the gyrating images on his computer screen and open the door. A bellhop in the hallway held out a slim brown cardboard box which bore the Drake Hotel logo. Sherlock took it, silently handed the bellhop what he hoped was a sufficiently generous tip, and managed to close the door on him before the bellhop could actually speak.

Turning back into the room, Sherlock rattled the box. The clink of metal acted on his nerves more quickly than he had suspected. With unseemly but fortunately unobserved haste, Sherlock lifted up the cover to have a peek.

The box had been lined with, of all things, black jeweler's velvet, against which a new and quite businesslike pair of steel handcuffs gleamed like silver. A key attached to a small steel chain was taped to the underside of the box top. Also affixed to the underside of the box top was a post-it note from Ladd, presenting this token of appreciation with the compliments of the house, and insisting that there was no need to return it.

Sherlock detached the note and crumpled it in one hand. He replaced the box top and slipped into the bathroom, which was now choked with clouds of hot steam. Barely casting a glance at the frosted glass that enclosed the shower, Sherlock laid the box on the white marble countertop near the sink, amongst John's shaving things. 

Silently, Sherlock stole back across the thick carpet toward the desk and his computer. Room 812 was, he admitted grudgingly, impressive in a kind of naive and overeager way. No surface had been left alone that could possibly be upholstered. The bed was the size of a tennis court, and exploding with velvet-encased pillows bound by cords of braid and trimmed with tassels. Even the chair he had drawn up by the desk was overstuffed, and the glass-top desk itself was ringed with thick silken fringe.

It was an incongruous setting for the work he was doing. Hilton Cubitt's wife, Elsie, had begun manifesting symptoms of depression and paranoia after receiving an email, apparently from a spam address, with an attachment which proved when opened to be a video cobbled together from clips of different American rap artists striking a variety of semi-obscene poses while rattling off quasi-nonsensical lyrics. No individual clip was longer than five seconds, and the video itself lasted only two minutes and fifteen seconds. Other videos, made with the same components but never exactly alike, began appearing, popping up on her desktop without warning in the midst of her ordinary browsing. Sherlock had taken the case expecting to do all the work remotely--it was a simple case of cracking a code, after all--but it proved a difficult problem, as the video clips contained so much information that he was quite some time in ruling out the apparently infinitely multiplying possibilities. Cubitt was the one who had insisted they travel to meet with him and interview Elsie personally. Sherlock had declined twice. The third time he'd put it to John, who declined a further two times. When Cubitt repeated the request in a significantly more desperate pitch, John became nervous enough about losing their second-richest client to submit the matter to his therapist. John's report was that the question was barely out of his mouth before his therapist said, "Go. Go. Go, for God's sake, go." After she had recovered from this brief and uncharacteristic fit of directiveness, she explained that from what she could tell, the three of them were locked into a negative interaction pattern and that there had to be some kind of break to re-set the relationships. Sometimes what children need, she had told him, is not more attention from their parents, but less. Take a weekend off to reconnect with each other, and give Rachel a chance to miss you.

So far, Sherlock reflected, less parental attention had failed to produce any benefits. Rachel was surlier, sulkier, and less happy to see them coming every time they went down to the Priory School. John was of course heartbroken by it, though he pretended that he was 'toughing it out' to see if over the long term things might improve. Sherlock did not expect them to. Rachel being infuriating was of course nothing new; but there was something about her current surliness which felt very different. Rachel had, for all her faults, always been truthful with them; in fact, inability to conceal her true feelings was one of the chief sources of her difficulties with other adults. But Sherlock knew that there was something Rachel was keeping from them--and it wasn't that she was unhappy at the Priory School. It was not that he had caught her out on anything. It was more that...there was some new element to her view of the world, some additional perspective warping it, and she wasn't ever going to tell them what it was. Something had happened to make her not just unhappy, but hard. Angry in a cold way, not with the hot anger she had picked up from John. There was something about she way she looked at them that had never been there before. Something bitter. Something almost like contempt.

It was a problem far more interesting, and far more dangerous, than the one he was currently being paid to solve. He returned his attention to the screen with a sigh. The actual words being rapped, he was fairly certain, were meaningless. They did not fit together to make a coherent message, and no pattern of extracted letters, phonemes, or syllables would. Analyzing the frequency with which individual clips recurred had yielded nothing. Could it possibly have something to do with the settings? The backgrounds or graphic effects used along with the dancers?

The sound of gushing water abruptly ceased. Sherlock remained at the desk, perfectly still, watching the video with the sound turned off, waiting.

The sliding of the shower door, the dripping of water onto the thick bathmat, the sound of John's vigorous self-toweling, of John's feet padding across the marble tiles to the sink.

And then the lifting of the box.

From inside the bathroom, Sherlock heard a sharp intake of breath, and then a low, trembling, involuntary moan.

Sherlock felt every blood cell in his body wake up, and begin to move.

Sherlock began shutting down his computer, doing his best to keep his movements entirely ordinary and under his own control. In the black glass of the dead screen, he saw a reflection of John, coming through the doorway of the bathroom. He was wrapped in that ridiculously plush white bathrobe provided by the hotel, and the naked metal of the handcuffs glinted in his open palm.

"Sherlock?" he said.

Sherlock stood up and turned. The look on John's face made it curiously difficult to speak. It was an expression that was almost literally achingly familiar, and yet it had been so long since he'd seen it.  John's face looked entirely ordinary--at rest, with that bland expression of "what is it now" that he seemed to greet most of the world with most of the time--except for his mouth, which was still not exactly smiling but also not exactly not.

"Yes?" Sherlock said, as if this were merely the most boring moment of a very boring day.

"Game on?"

"Yes," Sherlock said.

"Right now?"

"If it's convenient."

It was important somehow to maintain the pretense that this was an ordinary and not especially interesting conversation about routine business; but it was difficult to do so under any circumstances, and this time Sherlock felt it was fast becoming impossible. They hadn't been on holiday together since Mycroft's death. 

"Original rules?"

"Post-Antwerp," Sherlock said. 

John's face assumed an expression that could almost be classified as a pout.

"Post-Antwerp," Sherlock repeated, firmly.

"All right, all right," said John. 

Annoyance and disappointment flickered and vanished. John looked up, almost sunnily, and said, "Which do you...?"

"You choose," Sherlock replied.

This part of the exchange was pro forma. John always chose and he always made the same choice.

John made it now, rustling forward in his puffy white robe and holding out the cuffs in his hand. Sherlock plucked them from his palm, folded them up in one hand, and slipped them into his pocket.

"Well then," Sherlock said, holding himself extra-rigid in order to disguise the thousand little tremors that had begun deep inside him. "Get lost."

And John allowed himself to break into a real smile. The sight of that pure and happy anticipation on John's lined face gave Sherlock's heart a surprisingly painful twist. It simply emphasized, quite poignantly, how rare happiness had become--over the past five years--for John.

Sherlock turned away to boot up the computer again and pretend to be busy with it. But he heard everything--from the long moments John spent deliberating over which belt to wear, to the tiny difficult sounds of cufflinks being coaxed through two layers of cotton. It was part of the game that Sherlock could not turn round to watch him go. But Sherlock closed his eyes, as the door opened, and began building the visual based on the auditory evidence. Worn blue jeans, the low-heeled boots John couldn't be got to abandon after the trend was over, and a particularly crisp white cotton shirt which buttoned down the front. 

The door closed. Sherlock let out a long sigh. The rules demanded that he give John a quarter of an hour's head start, so that John could find the bar and have the requisite stiff drink in peace. But it was hard. Sherlock could see, printed on the insides of his eyelids, a vision of John standing by the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door, dressing in unhurried anticipation, his sturdy fingers sliding each of the imitation-shell buttons between the lips of its corresponding aperture. The desire to see this phantom image in the flesh was sharp, and pungent, and growing rapidly.

He went back to work. But his eyes kept wandering to the time clock in the bottom corner of the screen. Fourteen minutes to go. Thirteen. Twelve.

* * * * *

John stood for a few moments, hands on hips, staring across a vast expanse of carpet at the tufted crest of white foliage that was the focal point of what the Drake evidently called the Palm Court. 

It was an incredible--in the most literal sense--spectacle. An Anglophile's fantasy of Edwardian elegance, as exaggerated and unreal as Downton Abbey had ever been. The whole look of the place made John's skin itch. It oozed a particular kind of feminine affluence which reminded him in a nauseating way of his mother's disappointed dreams of splendor. Had she been able to do it, she would have filled their house with curvy-legged chairs covered in white damask, with delicate china and dainty silver and a carpet you could lose a hairbrush in. Instead of which she had a humiliating suite of beige furniture, struggling to retain at least an air of respectability under the repeated insults offered by her children. Nice things. Mum could perhaps have had them, if Dad had been less mean about his money, or if John and Harry had ever respected their mother's desire for beauty or their father's desire for order.

It was the last place Sherlock would expect him to go; and that was why John had gone straight there from the elevator. Service was often slow at these big old-fashioned hotels, and the stipulated fifteen minutes didn't always give him time to get clean away before the hunt began. It would be better strategy to have his drink somewhere Sherlock wouldn't expect him to do it. 

John pulled a chair back from one of the small round tables and sat down in it. The upholstery was uncomfortable; these things always looked better than they felt. Comfort, he supposed, was vulgar. Nevertheless it was what he had always wanted, and what--to the extent that money and the mysteries of human temperament allowed--he had gradually filled up 221B with. Rachel appreciated it, at any rate. Her favorite thing in the world was to curl up among the cushions now padding John's old armchair and read something.

Poor Rachel. The great experiment was not going well.

Based on the tenor of the regular progress reports for which he had asked, it appeared that after some initial enthusiasm for her intelligence and her curiosity, Rachel's classroom teachers were settling into an attitude of resentful tolerance. The usual pattern. Soon they would stop tolerating her altogether. He was already resigned to having to look out for a new school at the end of term; but part of him still hoped that given time, she might settle in, and things begin to improve. Best not to approach these things impulsively.

John's eyes roamed the room, seeking some relief from the white and the silver and the daintiness. You could have a decent time here with Rachel, he thought, whispering together while the servers weren't hanging about, trading jokes about how awful it all was. He felt a sharp pang thinking of her. It was a bloody business, this family thing. He had longed for years to have another holiday with Sherlock, just to be able to go to bed at night and get up in the morning and have nothing to think about but each other. And yet here he was, missing Rachel; and he knew Sherlock missed her too. This despite the fact that on their past four visits, they had all derived very little joy from each other's presence. Rachel was angry, viciously angry, about having been--as she saw it--dumped there, and could not forget it for an instant. He hoped that when Harry got down there--let's see, eleven o'clock tomorrow morning would be four a.m. in Chicago--she could make some headway. Rachel's fondness for Harry had proved extremely durable even during the worst of the storms. Harry didn't have to deal with her teachers, or get her out of bed in the morning. She likes you better than she likes me, John had said to her rather bitterly one afternoon. Do not even, Harry had fired back. She will love both of you, until she dies, in ways that she will never love another human being. I'm just the girlfriend she complains to about the people who REALLY matter.

And then she'd said, after a tense pause, _If either of us had had even one parent who loved us as obviously and consistently as you both love Rachel, we'd be in much better shape right now._

He knew it was true. And yet loving Rachel didn't seem to help her very much.

His fear was that the solution to Rachel's problems would turn out to be pharmaceutical. Sherlock refused to even discuss this possibility. But John was the one who'd lived with Mary. Sherlock spoke glibly of psychopathy and sociopathy as if these terms merely designated particularly difficult personality types. Sherlock was, or professed to be, blissfully unaware of the chemistry of it all, of how dependent human identity really was on the efficiency of a particular type of receptor at embracing a particular type of molecule. Without forgiving a single particle of all the things Mary had done to all of them, John was becoming more convinced with the passage of time that Mary had gone wrong chemically as well as morally--that nobody could have lived her life, or been the many people she pretended to be, if some malicious malformation of her nervous system had not made it possible.

A server had finally spotted John, across the room, and began walking in his direction.

John sprang out of the chair as if the damask had caught fire. He couldn't do this. He couldn't have a drink here, not properly. He couldn't waste this more than precious opportunity marinating in his mother's long-lost dream and his failures as a father. He'd go to the other bar, the one he'd passed during his initial recon, where they had leather seats and wood and blokes.

He checked his watch. They'd forgotten to synchronize, but the discrepancies would be minimal. He had eight minutes left before Sherlock would be on the prowl. 

The maddest of the many mad things about this game was that John couldn't stop trying to win. A part of him still cherished the sensations of the battlefield--the strained nerves, the quiver of adrenaline, the psychotically singleminded desire to detect and defeat the danger lurking out there beyond the safe zone. The fact that he was being stalked by Sherlock instead of an unknown assailant, and the fact that this was all unfolding within the limits of a stuffy, overheated, dully opulent hotel the likes of which Afghanistan had never known, blunted his hyper-awareness just enough to keep it from crossing over from arousal into panic.  

After they got back from that memorable Berlin trip eight years earlier, he'd felt the need to set up an emergency session with his therapist. His therapist had since become accustomed to his rhythm of long absences punctuated by panicked single consultations. Is it bad, he'd asked her, to re-traumatize myself this way? Will it make me sick? Does it mean that I already am sick? She had looked at him impassively and observed, in a clinical tone, that many survivors of trauma found ways of using sex to heal it, that sex was one of the few things that went deep enough to reach the places where the wounds survive, and that the all-important question regarding these matters was whether you had a partner capable of understanding what you needed and giving it to you safely.

At that moment he realized why sex with Mary had always been routine and without risk. Deluded though his mind and heart were, his body had grasped on some physical level that the answer to the all-important question was "no." And she, obviously, knew it too.

John took a seat on one of the red-leather-covered stools at the bar. After placing his order, he swiveled around on the stool, casually, searching the dimmer areas where the faux-gaslights overhead didn't reach. No sign. It was too early, really. And yet John did feel sure, somehow, that Sherlock  _was_ at this bar--had gotten there before him--was tucked away in some invisible hiding place, peering out through a crack in the paneling, watching him. Watching John wrap both hands around the cold glass pushed across the wood by the bored barkeep. Watching John lift the drink to his lips. Watching him drink. Wetting his own lips, perhaps, in anticipation of the kill.

John felt a shiver pass through him. He took a large gulp of his drink.

To know--or feel as if he knew--that Sherlock was out there, watching him with the same deadly attention he would pay to a serial killer--to a mobster--to Magnussen--to whatever unfortunate malefactor had been drawn into the orbit of Sherlock's merciless gaze, evoked in John a kind of excitement which could easily become a source of public embarrassment. John had selected his least tight pair of jeans, but it would still be a good idea to finish his drink and move out quickly. He wanted--intensely, abjectly, helplessly--to be caught. But it was part of the game to defer the terror of fulfillment for as long as he could. 

*  *  *  *  *   *

Three minutes left.

Sherlock had entirely abandoned the paying client and was instead making a virtual tour of the Drake's public spaces, plotting them on the map of the hotel that he was building in his head. One of the rules was that Sherlock was not allowed to make his move if there were witnesses present. Since the post-Antwerp rules excluded areas off limits to hotel guests--maintenance closets, boiler rooms, kitchens, the roof--the hunt was a bit more of a challenge; but that was a necessary amendment. At the time of the Antwerp incident, Rachel was just on the brink of preschool, Mycroft was still alive, the world was no more dark and twisted than it ever had been before, Magnussen had just been found dead in a filthy motel in Utah, and the game was new. Overtaken by their own invention, they had prolonged the hunt phase for hours, Sherlock declining opportunity after opportunity in order to savor the mounting anticipation. When he finally pounced, they could not help going at it right where they were--which happened to be a basement room used for the storage of soiled bed linen, into which an unsuspecting housekeeper had blundered at an inopportune moment. Actually being arrested was, for Sherlock, less humiliating than contacting the British consulate and placing a call to Mycroft. But after Sherlock had endured a few hours of gloating, Mycroft saw to it that the charges were dropped, and the whole thing was hushed up.

Mycroft would never gloat over him again. Or hush anything up for them.

It was easy enough, in the days after the catastrophe, to list all of the practical reasons why Mycroft's death was a problem. Not least among them was the fact that their father's heart had been broken, and that this rapidly degraded his mind. Or the fact that Marian, while caring for Alfred with all the skill and devotion she had always commanded, slowly revealed that she had retained her own mental acuity by going insane. Her belief in Mycroft's eventual return was sheer delusion, one Sherlock had not shared for a moment. Sherlock had examined Mycroft's body himself. It was definitely Mycroft, and definitely dead. Marian's insistence to the contrary was simply a retreat into fantasy, for which Sherlock blamed himself. It had seemed like such a clever idea, such a masterstroke, dying and returning. He and Mycroft had enjoyed those two years together, alone in the bubble of his 'death.' 

It would not have taken a genius, John once told him, to predict that a man who went to that much trouble to engineer his own resurrection might have some difficulty coping with the death of a loved one.

A loved one. It was one of those platitudinous phrases that Sherlock had assumed were essentially empty. It had taken him so long to realize that this was what, in fact, Mycroft had been to him. A loved one. Someone he loved. One of the few precious beings on the planet who had loved him no matter how much of an dick he was, no matter how much damage he was doing to himself and others. It had taken Sherlock so long just to realize that he was sad because he had lost someone irreplaceable, that he was afraid because he was learning that he would eventually lose them all, that being a Holmes did not make you immune from death, that being a Watson didn't either.

Simple things. Things John understood immediately, instinctively, but which Sherlock had to be taught slowly and with great pain.

One minute left.

Sherlock leapt from his chair and finished dressing. For a hunt outside in the shadows you wore black. To stalk your quarry through a pricey hotel in the American midwest, you dressed like a bored executive vice president of marketing for Applebee's. He did his best to make his hair lie flat and to exclude, to the extent that he could, any vestiges of style or flair from his ensemble. Then he tucked a key card into one pocket of his trousers, and, fingering the handcuffs he'd stuffed into the other, slipped into the hallway. He strode, as blankly and mindlessly as he could, down to the elevator bank, hiding in the light.

*  *  *  *  *   *

John looked at his watch. His fifteen minutes were up.

He pounded what remained of his drink. Setting the bottom of the glass down on the counter, he swung himself off the stool and made his way with as much speed as seemed socially appropriate out of the bar. The question was where to go next. There was so much hotel. A workout room, a business center, a spa. A spa. That image provoked a laugh that he could only suppress with a twinge of pain. 

He passed the palm court again, surveying the ranks of deserted white chairs. He wondered for a moment whether Sherlock might be hiding behind the giant feathery centerpiece. Or whether that tall server with his back to John, bending solicitously over a table occupied by a frosty-haired mother and her bored and shopping-laden daughter, might actually be Sherlock. No, the hair was not quite right, and the shape of the backside was wrong. Could Sherlock be...

And it happened.

No matter where John looked, he saw signs of Sherlock. In the unexpected rustling of one of the table arrangements. In the muffled footfalls on the carpet behind him. Just around the corner, hiding in that dark alcove near the entrance to the bar. In the elevator, waiting to emerge. In the stairwell, waiting for John to enter. In the wallpaper, in the chandeliers, in the mahogany, in the air. Sherlock was the whole hotel. He was the floor and the walls and the air. Anywhere the light touched John, Sherlock would see him. There was nowhere John could go where Sherlock couldn't find him, nowhere John could hide where Sherlock couldn't reach.

Let me just get out of sight as soon as possible, John thought, before something irretrievably inappropriate happens.

He made straight for the lift. There was no point in trying to skulk. Sherlock knew. He always knew. When it was time, he would come.

He pressed the button for the ninth floor. 

Once inside the elevator, he rallied slightly. If Sherlock had been watching him, he'd have gone up to the ninth floor to wait. John could at least give him the trouble of getting off at a different floor, and give him a few moments to whet his appetite while wondering where his brilliant calculations had gone wrong. He pushed the button for the fifth floor instead.

*   *   *   *   *

The Drake's magnificent lobby brooded above a tier of tiny retail shops. Sherlock had spent some time browsing the florist's and jewelry shops, pretending to be thinking about taking a present back to the wife at home, to make up for the sins he planned to commit while on his executive retreat. This performance was not for John's benefit, of course; John wasn't on this level. John would undoubtedly be in the lift now, headed for the fifth floor.

There were ten floors in the Drake, plus a penthouse which was off limits to ordinary visitors. Ask people to choose a number between one and ten and they will choose seven; an odd number, prime, not exactly in the center but safely far enough away from either extreme. But their room was on eight; and if you were to be dragged down a stairwell in handcuffs it was always easier on you going down than up, so he would be drawn instead to nine. But he would of course second-guess his first choice, knowing Sherlock would be able to predict it. On the same logic governing the general preference for the number seven, John would look at the gap between one and nine and choose five. Sherlock would find him there, when he was done pretending to be a bored American businessman.

His disguises, Sherlock knew, were not strictly speaking practical. The one time concealing his identity through disguise had actually worked, he had regretted it instantly. But Sherlock still derived pleasure from increasing the contrast between what people thought he was doing and what was actually taking place. It was gratifying to reflect that everyone around him thought his name was Brad and that he was on a break between meetings about market share and saturation points. They would never know that this venal little middle manager was in fact a powerful mage plotting a piece of powerful and complex magic, matching every last one of his wits against the forces of evil that kept John imprisoned in that cloven pine.

_You're like Ariel in the cloven pine, Charles. I can let you out._

Mycroft had given him that book, when Sherlock was only seven.  _A Wrinkle In Time._ Mycroft had found it in Mummy's office, read it in an hour or so, and determined accurately that it would be the perfect instrument with which to torture the sensitive mind of his younger brother. The girl was meant to be the hero, of course; but for Sherlock that book would always be a nightmare about a little boy named Charles Wallace who was tethered by his own precocious genius to a malevolent and omnipotent brain bent on destroying him forever. 

Mycroft. Being dead didn't make him any less of a bastard. And yet Sherlock could see, now, beneath Mycroft's calculated cruelty, the impulse of love, suppressed and twisted into something unrecognizable. Mycroft must have recognized himself in Charles Wallace too. Perhaps this cursed gift was a way of telling Sherlock, without having to  _say_ it and die of shame, that Sherlock was not in fact alone. That there was someone out there who loved him enough, who  _knew_ him enough, to free him from his own overgrown intellect. 

Nobody would call John a genius. But Sherlock hadn't known him very long before that line about the cloven pine came back to him. The simplicity everyone saw in John was simply the bland external wall of a diabolically complex prison that John had built in which to incarcerate a spirit that he was afraid to trust to the mercies of world. And John had kept all the gates to it locked for so long that he had lost all the keys. And what a stroke of luck for John to have met up with the only man on earth interested enough, and clever enough, to find a way to break in. 

Sherlock consulted his watch--the largest and most ostentatious in his collection--and moved along to the little glass booth that held what the Americans called a convenience store. Snacks, trinkets, cold drinks, toiletries. And among the toiletries, thankfully, Sherlock found exactly what he was looking for. He took one of the boxes off the shelves, pretending to be furtive and embarrassed. Glancing around he did see one lady of a certain age, her hair recently frosted and her rail-thin shoulders swathed in scarves, giving him a disapproving look.

He smiled at her, brilliantly. Then he returned to the shelf and took down another two boxes. 

When passed her on his way to the cashier, she was still staring at him.

"Sorry," he said, with his cheeriest, broadest midwestern accent. "They only sell the travel size. Don't worry, I left plenty for you."

He heard her gasp as he triumphantly lined up the three boxes of K-Y on the counter. The cashier rang them up without even looking at him.

One could, of course, improvise. But they were both getting older, and more aware of the value of time. Especially time alone.

That was the unfortunate thing, Sherlock thought, as he tucked the brown paper bag discreetly into an inside pocket and began climbing the steps toward the lobby. As hard as boarding seemed to be on Rachel, it had undeniably been good for him and John. They were breathing easier. They were sleeping better. They were touching each other. Rachel's absence was both a constant source of grief and a relief.

It's a difficult problem, Mycroft, Sherlock thought, as he crossed the lobby and began looking for a stairwell. The most difficult I think anyone has ever tried to solve. Myself and John and Rachel. I could use some help.

Mycroft said nothing, as usual.

*  *   *   *   *

The fifth floor lobby was deserted when John stepped out into it. Silent as death, and as pristine as if no living human had ever left a footprint there.

It occurred to John, as he searched for the most obscure cul-de-sac he could find in that maze of corridors, that there was always something nightmarish about a hotel hallway. All those blind doors, identical but for the numbers, each door hiding something which, for all you knew, was a secret crime of indescribable horror. Humanity in all its perversity writhing behind the walls, but you couldn't see or hear any of it. He was utterly alone. It was like being damned, or dead.

In the corridor onto which he had wandered, however, there was one room door open and a housekeeping cart standing outside it. The cart looked to John like exactly the kind of thing Sherlock would use for cover. And if John had to be found, he certainly didn't want to be found anywhere there were witnesses. 

John turned around and sped back to the last corner he'd taken. As he stepped into the intersection between two corridors, he was knocked sideways. His chest hit the carpet first, then his knees. Then the weight of a fully grown middle-aged man who was not quite as lithe as he used to be slammed onto John's torso and pinned him, from shoulders to hips, to the floor.

That first shock of collision, opening up the first cracks.

John heard the rattle of metal. He braced himself on his right arm and tried to twist and throw Sherlock off. Sherlock took a tighter grip with his knees and seized John's left hand with both of his own, twisting it behind John's back. One ring of the handcuffs shut with a click around John's immobilized wrist.

Don't hold back, Sherlock had told him, after the second time they'd tried this. Struggle all you like. It won't hurt me and you won't win.

To an observer, they would have looked like adversaries. Like two enemies wrestling on the carpet, each trying to subdue the other. This observer would have thought, perhaps, if he recognized the man on top, that Sherlock was apprehending a particularly troublesome suspect. And all because no observer could know that these two men were not fighting, but dancing. All because they could not hear the music to which they moved. Could not hear, because it was spoken in a language only the two of them understood, the lyrics John was repeating with the urgency of prayer.  _I'm too straight. Can you bend me? I'm too strong. Can you break me? Wrapped too tight. Can you undo me? Too defended. Can you take me?_ An observer could not know, as John could _only_ know, from anything his senses would tell him--from the weight on his hips, or the cold metal yoking his wrists together, or the ache in his shoulders or the pressure of his own hands against the small of his back or the breath hot against the nape of his neck--that John was getting the only answer he wanted, from the only person with permission to give it:  _Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes._

*   *   *   *   *   

The lift doors opened, proving Sherlock's calculations correct. At this time of night on a floor that contained no major amenities, Sherlock had reasoned, any occupied lift that passed the fifth floor would be traveling downward. This one, called up to the sleepy and deserted fifth floor by the repeated pressure on the button of Sherlock's impatient fingers, was beautifully and mercifully empty.

Sherlock grasped John by the shoulder with one hand and by his manacled wrists with the other and propelled him forward into the empty lift, whose paneled walls had perhaps witnessed far racier performances than this one. John stumbled on his way in. Sherlock caught him just in time, before he cracked his forehead against the glass covering the lift's mirrored rear wall. 

"Thanks," John grunted. Sherlock turned him around by the shoulders and pushed his back up against the mirrors. With the doors closed and the lift straining toward the eighth floor, Sherlock  lunged forward.

John's mouth was already half-open and panting, his eyes already half-closed. Sherlock kissed him, thrusting his tongue into John's waiting mouth while his hands flew to the buttons on that white cotton shirt. John's rough tongue rasped against his as their lips pressed against each other's. Sherlock savored the electric tang, the mingling tastes of all the salts and solutions called out of John's body by the stress of the game. 

Every movement of Sherlock's body made John's breath come louder and faster. Distracted, Sherlock found his fingers stammering on the buttons. He undid them all, all the same, with as much precision as he could command. John's body learned the rhythm quickly, his chest giving a little heave of anticipation just before each button worked its way out. 

Pulling John's back away from the mirrored wall, Sherlock stripped the white shirt off John's shoulders, peeling the sleeves back until the bracelets stopped them. With his mouth still working on John's, Sherlock grasped John's joined wrists with one hand, pushing John's hips against his own.

Ready as always. That was the beautiful thing about John. After five years coping with Sherlock crying for no reason, with miseries that neither of them had ever imagined Sherlock could fall prey to, with the hideous financial and emotional consequences of Sherlock's attempts to wake his fellow Britons from their deluded stupor--after watching Sherlock's desires disappear into an absolute and unconquerable void, after crouching patiently by the event horizon for years hoping in hope that something might emerge from it--after five years of this, to see a box next to the sink in a strange hotel and simply step out of the bathroom and say, I'm ready. Always ready, even now. Faith Sherlock could never deserve, generosity Sherlock would grow old trying to reciprocate. That was John. That was the gift Sherlock had been given, for no reason that he could understand. 

Sherlock ran his tongue along John's exposed neck, tasting the adrenaline-laced sweat. Sherlock's free hand struck out on its own, fingering the buckle of John's belt.

John drew back. "Not here," he groaned.

Sherlock got the buckle loose. John's voice got louder.

"No, Sherlock. You said. Post-Antwerp."

The lift chimed. They were at the eighth floor.

With a sigh, Sherlock left John leaning against the mirror, held the "door open" button with one hand, and verified that the coast was clear. Sherlock tucked one hand between John's arm and his torso and marched him out of the elevator. 

Once they had gained the hallway, John's arm gave a sudden jerk. Caught off guard, Sherlock grabbed at thin air as John ran down the hall away from him, laughing. 

Sherlock broke into a run, chasing down John's laugh and his bare back and the jeans and the impudently flapping tails of the white shirt still trailing from John's linked hands. He wondered, with the part of his brain that was not wholly absorbed in watching John's backside, what John would do if Sherlock simply refused to chase him. Stand there in the hallway modeling his still-reasonably-hard pecs and abs for the passersby? Try to run the key card through the reader with his teeth?

But Sherlock could no more refuse to chase him than John could refuse to be caught. John was standing with his back to the door of room 812 when Sherlock got there. John's hair was wildly and rather comically disordered, but there was nothing risible about the heaving of his chest or the gaze of unreasoning lust with which he fixed Sherlock as he leaned past John to slide the key card through the handle. When the door opened John nearly fell into the room. Sherlock followed him in, grabbing his elbows to steady him. Reaching back with one foot, Sherlock kicked the door closed. As soon as he heard the lock click, Sherlock threw John, with what he hoped was not excessive force, against the narrow strip of wall between the door to the hallway and the entrance to the closet.

Sherlock put both hands against John's bare chest, darted his head forward, and took John's left ear into his mouth. Only after John's laugh had turned into a series of distressed moans did Sherlock growl, in what he meant to be an affectionate way, "Now stand still."

Everything that had surprised Sherlock when they first began doing this surprised him again now. The taste of John's skin along his neck, over his ribs. The little whimpers John made; the little high-pitched cries that followed. The heat trapped in the space between John's shoulders and the wall, the fever trembling of John's bound hands as Sherlock interlaced the fingers of one hand with them. John's bum, surely the most perfect thing evolution had ever created. The way the floor and walls shook when John's belt finally snaked out of the loops and sailed into the air, and his trousers finally opened. The taste. The taste. The taste.

What had Sherlock ever done to earn this? How had he, after everything he had done to John, become a person John could trust in this screaming, bodyshaking, heartbreaking way?

It was hard, in a way, to be the implacable predator John seemed to need him to be, when all Sherlock could actually think of was how grateful he was for John's so cunningly hidden vulnerability and his infinitely invincible trust. But in a way it was not. There were things coming to life in Sherlock at that moment that had been dead for years. And John could not possibly want Sherlock to be any hungrier than he actually was.

* * * * *

 John had no idea how long he had been kneeling there by the foot of the bed, his knees apart, his hips pressed up against the edge of the mattress and his chest flat against the bedspread. His hands were still cuffed behind him. Against his back he could feel the cotton fabric of the white shirt, which Sherlock had wrapped and tied around his forearms. With his head turned to the side, he could just barely catch sight--if he dug his chin right into his shoulder--of Sherlock's naked shoulder and the curls of his dark head, bent over John's hands. It seemed to him as if, from the shock of his chest hitting the carpet on the fifth floor to Sherlock's bending John over the edge of the bed and taking John's fingers, one by one, hungrily into his mouth, this time was simply one long moment that had always been and would never pass. He could not remember what he had ever done before this began. He never wanted to do anything else, ever again. John gave himself up to the tiny succession of shivers, the long shudders, the stronger vibrations. The state of gasping, trembling, tender and twitching anticipation. His hips writhed as if with a will of their own. One cry after another burned its way up from his shuddering chest through his already-hoarse throat, each louder than the last. 

There was a sliding rustle, as of a snake trailing itself across the pages of an open book. Sherlock's face was staring into John's now, the eyes wide and dark. One of Sherlock's arms was draped across John's bare shoulders. He could not recall at precisely what point Sherlock's clothes had vanished. It didn't matter. John stared at Sherlock's moving lips, trying to remember how language worked.

"Ready?" 

John nodded.

Sherlock disappeared for a moment. Then John heard a tiny metallic tinkle. Sherlock slid the key into the lock, and opened the handcuffs.

Sherlock unwrapped the shirt and yanked John's wrists free of it. John heard the shirt land somewhere on the floor as his arms slid onto the bedspread. His shoulders ached with relief. With great difficulty, he dragged himself up onto the bed, then collapsed prone on the coverlet, closing his eyes. 

John felt Sherlock wrapping something smooth around his right wrist. He looked down and saw that Sherlock was binding it with one end of the dreadful red and blue striped tie that Sherlock had been wearing as part of his 'disguise.' 

As if he was moving them through water, John slid his arms over the bedspread to join his wrists above his head. Sherlock wrapped his other wrist with the wide end of the tie, leaving a few inches of fabric between them. And then John saw Sherlock rise up on his knees, look up at the unbroken stretch of upholstered headboard, and mutter, "Bugger."

John burst out laughing.

He was afraid at first that Sherlock would be hurt. But instead, Sherlock collapsed onto his back, laughing just as hard. 

"If there's nowhere to tie it, you can just--" John gasped, when he had stopped laughing too hard to speak. 

"No," Sherlock said, definitively. "No. This is a simple engineering problem. It is by no means insoluble."

Sherlock crawled toward the headboard, sliding one arm between the mattress and the upholstery, feeling around for any slat or join or piece of wood or metal that could be used as an anchor. John laid his cheek against the bedspread and closed his eyes.Sherlock would take care of it. In the meantime, John would lie there, bathed in the sweat of desire, aching in anticipation. 

He heard the heavy drapes rustling. The mattress lurched and shivered as Sherlock knelt on it. John opened his eyes, just for a glance. From one of Sherlock's hands trailed one of the elaborate curtain tiebacks. Its other end snaked into the gap by the headboard and dropped out of sight. Sherlock must have found some part of the bedframe to tie it to.

The riot of sensations that this sight called up in John was shot through with an unexpected and bitter blast from some forbidden corner of his mind:  _Not exactly the son you wanted, am I, Dad._ _  
_

John couldn't push the thought away. John looked up, instead, and let his eyes follow the long path of that ornamental rope as it meandered over the pillows toward his joined hands. And far away, so far away he could barely even hear it, John heard his father's voice. _Do you know what you have there? Do you know what it means? It means you're a boy. A boy. Not a girl. Do you understand?_

And the sound of Harry--seven-year-old Harry--banging on the outside of the door, crying, and screaming,  _Daddy don't, don't. We were only playing. It was my fault. It was my fault, I'm the oldest._

Harry in that tiny soldier's jacket, miles too small for her, and John in Harry's nurse's costume, playing Florence Nightingale in the backyard, finding his toy lion in the leaves and dressing his paw. And then his father's footsteps on the pavement. And his father's fury as he looked at his son wearing a dress, apron, and cap. And the blast of his father's voice, nearly knocking both of them over.

Forty years and more John had kept that memory in the box. And now the box was opening.

The places where the wounds live.

Sherlock pulled the the long strip of embroidered fabric taut, and wrapped one end around the few inches of fabric linking John's wrists. 

John watched Sherlock make the knot.

 _I'm not a boy, Dad,_  John thought, as Sherlock tested the strength of the tieback and the tightness of the knot. _I'm a man. Not your kind of man. But the only kind of man I ever want to be._

"All right." Sherlock had lain down next to him, on his side. The dark curls around his face were damp with sweat. Sherlock put a hand on John's back between his shoulderblades, and gave out something that was half a sigh and half a laugh. "Ready?"

"Ready," John said.

Sherlock's face disappeared. John bent his knees, bracing himself on his elbows, drawing the ligature anchoring his wrists as tight as it would go.

You don't know, John thought, as Sherlock began. All this time you think you know who you are and you're partly right but there's so much you don't know. Some things you can't learn alone. You don't know the shape of your own emptiness until you've found someone who knows how to fill it. And until someone turns the key, you don't even know you're locked up.

*  *  *   *   *

Sherlock collapsed onto the bed, rolling over onto his back. Their last shouts were still ringing, sound waves chasing each other into the corners of the room. He felt as if his entire body had turned to water. The slightest motion might tear a hole in his latex-thin skin, and he might just flow into the bedspread and melt away entirely.

His eyes were closed. But he felt the shift of the mattress and the creak of the springs and the change in the strength of the light. When he opened his eyes again, John was crouched over him, one knee planted on either side of Sherlock's waist, his hand pressed against Sherlock's chest. Still panting. Still shaking. 

Sherlock closed his eyes, slowly, and let his head sink deeper among the pillows.

Sherlock felt utterly drained. But he knew, from all the times before, that there was more. What was released from the cloven pine was not an airy sprite, but a hard-fleshed, rough-skinned creature with a voracious mouth and uncontrollable hands. Sherlock always anticipated this part the most. Being devoured. Just lying there, nearly empty, nearly unable to move, while John crawled all over him, and dragged one more miracle out of Sherlock's exhausted flesh.

Because after that, it _was_ perfect. Perfect silence, perfect peace. Nothing left in his brain or body but an empty night sky, an infinite void purged of everything that had ever pricked him or poisoned him or done him harm. An untroubled sea of dark matter, cradling at its center a slowly unfurling cloud of light, within whose dissipating arms a host of tiny new stars were being born.

*   *   *   *   *

"What time is it?" John asked, half asleep already.

Sherlock had no idea and he wasn't going to investigate. There was a digital clock on the nightstand behind him, but it Sherlock hadn't the energy to turn around. In any case it would have meant dislodging John's head from his shoulder and lifting John's arm off his chest, neither of which Sherlock was disposed to do.

"Linear time is an artificial human construct," Sherlock replied. "It no longer matters."

John closed his eyes, pulling Sherlock closer, burrowing under the sheets.

"Up at six," John murmured. "Call Rachel."

"I've set the alarm," Sherlock said.

They lay in silence.

"Never would have known," John said, drifting. "Never."

Sherlock stroked John's hair with one hand, looking up at the ceiling. Six o'clock in Chicago; noon in England. By then Harry would have collected Rachel and they'd be at some tea shop, glaring at each other in sullen silence. 

Of course one felt guilty. But it was, Sherlock thought, unfair. The flight attendants had said, on the way over:  _In case of a sudden drop in cabin pressure, affix your own mask first and then assist the child._ Who's to say they weren't right? Who's to say that wasn't where they'd gone wrong in the first place: by driving everyone mad trying to assist the child, before ensuring that they themselves had enough oxygen? How can you help someone else when you're constantly gasping for breath?

"Course I did see it, even at first," John breathed, just above a whisper. "The way you move. Always dancing."

Sherlock chuckled, deep in his chest. 

"Always dancing," John said. "Every little movement...meaning of its own."

John fell asleep. Sherlock snapped wide awake.

The messages. Those nonsensical videos tormenting Elsie Cubitt. It wasn't the words, it wasn't the music, it wasn't the beat. It was the bodies of the men themselves. It was the dance. The choreography. Every little movement has a meaning of its own.

Every form of dance was made up of a limited vocabulary of moves which could be combined to form an infinite number of semiotic strings. Each repeated movement was one letter. Splice together the letters and you made up words. All he had to do was identify the different moves and count how often and when they recurred--

Sherlock slipped carefully out from under John's relaxing grasp, and stole quietly toward the desk.

*   *   *   *   *

When Sherlock's phone rang at four a.m. Chicago time, nobody heard it. Sherlock was hunched on the chair by the desk, wrapped in nothing but the bedspread, scrutinizing the motions of the unknown men on his computer screen, glancing back and forth between the screen and the hotel note pad on which he had jotted down the decoded versions of an increasingly alarming string of messages. Sherlock had plugged the headphones in, so he could hear the music without waking John. And John lay in bed, embracing the night with his arms flung wide, sleeping like the dead.

END CHAPTER


	7. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

**CHICAGO, SUNDAY, 8:20AM CST**

John sat on the edge of the hotel bed, flipping through the channels while Sherlock dressed. It was Sherlock's third attempt at clothing himself since stepping out of the shower that morning. The previous two attempts had been foiled by John, with Sherlock's tacit consent. However, they did have a 9:00am meeting scheduled with the client, and Sherlock seemed suddenly extremely keen to go. He must have finally cracked the code. 

The world was much the way it had been for the past several years. Climate change accelerating, economies flailing, the US in the middle of another insane presidential campaign season, Selkirk beaming his handsome smile into the hearts of millions of besotted Britons who had no idea what he'd done to become Prime Minister and even less idea of what he was capable of doing to stay Prime Minister. Mycroft still dead, Rachel still miserable, Harry still paying Rachel's tuition out of a trust fund he'd hoped to keep intact until she turned eighteen.

And yet John felt, despite what his eyes and brain were telling him, that it was a beautiful day in a perfect world. There were really only two things in the universe that bothered him right now. One was that his entire body was sore. The other was that he couldn't get in touch with Harry.

He clicked off the telly and picked up his phone for the fifteenth time.

Harry had got down to the Priory School all right. There was a text from her, received at 4:25am Chicago time, saying THE EAGLE HAS LANDED. Then one at 6:05am saying, @ HORRIBLE TEASHOP IN COTTESLEY. RACHEL SURLY. WISH YOU WERE HERE. INSTEAD OF ME. All as expected. But as Harry's phone was obviously on, John couldn't understand why Harry wouldn't pick up when he called. No matter how surly Rachel was, John wanted to talk to her. 

Sherlock walked over to the desk on which his own phone was charging. 

The past five years had taken some flesh off Sherlock's frame. John had coaxed him out the previous Christmas for some new clothes that would actually fit him. Sherlock had brought over one of the new suits, a dark jacket and trousers with a very thin grey stripe and a shirt whose color had been described by the shop assistant as plum blossom but which John just thought of as light purple. Sherlock had left off the tie and had the top two buttons open. John suppressed the lump forming in his throat. Sherlock was dressing once again, at last, as if he cared about it, after years of wandering 221B in the same ratty cardigan and drawstring trousers.

He watched Sherlock put the phone to his ear. His brows drew down, puzzled. He took the phone away and stared at the screen, frowning.

"Is it Harry?" John said. Maybe Harry had called Sherlock's number instead, at some point that morning, because John hadn't picked up.

Sherlock shook his head. He pocketed the phone. Turning to John, he looked sad for a moment. Then he clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and said, "Well. Let's go tell Mr. Cubitt that I've cracked his code for him."

John feigned surprise. "You never."

John beamed at him as hard as he could. Sherlock's smile got several watts brighter.

"Well--what does it mean?" John said, grabbing his jacket out of the closet.

It was odd, just walking down the hallway to the lift, without the handcuffs or the shirt or the knee-weakening lust. Although he could feel the ghost of that last item, every time he looked over at Sherlock. Entering the elevator, they faced the mirrored back wall, keeping six inches between them for the Holy Ghost.

"Without context some of the decoded messages remain obscure," said Sherlock, as he straightened his cuffs in the mirror. "I have determined one intriguing piece of information, however."

While John watched him in the mirror, Sherlock tucked a few stray curls into place. He leaned forward, studying the lines around his eyes, turning his face from side to side in the harsh light.

"I'm old," Sherlock said, as if he had just that moment noticed. "I'm ancient. When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me?"

John side-stepped closer, so that their reflected faces were next to each other.

"There," John said. "Now you're young again."

Sherlock dropped his eyes. He looked back up again and said, "You never change, John. Not to me."

The lift chimed.

John and Sherlock turned around as the doors opened. Instead of grabbing Sherlock and kissing him, John said, "So what was the piece of information?"

Sherlock strode through the open doors. John trotted to keep up with him. 

"Mr. Cubitt's wife's name is not Elsie," Sherlock said, as they began crossing the lobby. 

"What is it then?" John said.

Sherlock glanced toward the front desk. John knew that Sherlock was probably looking for that bright young thing he'd been flirting with during check-in, but he was nowhere in sight. 

"It appears to be Adela." 

"Adela what?"

"That I do not know," Sherlock said, as they descended the wide carpeted steps. "It's lucky, at any rate, because it helped confirm some of my guesses. The letter A is a very important one for our mystery correspondent."

"Really?" John said. "Why?"

A woman in a dark suit, wearing dark glasses and a chauffeur's cap, was walking toward them, holding up a sign that said "S. DONOVAN."

"That's us," Sherlock murmured, as he lifted a hand in acknowledgment.

"Yes, but what about the letter A?" John murmured back, as they walked toward the driver.

"Whoever is sending these messages signs them all with the same four letters. It's most likely an acronym, though it could also be a proper name or a place name. The point is, it contains two 'a's."

"And what else?" John said. For reasons he couldn't explain, Sherlock's voice was beginning to make him nervous.

"Time enough when we arrive," Sherlock said, cryptically.

"Mr. Donovan?" said the driver, tentatively.

"The same," said Sherlock, extending his hand. "This is my friend and colleage Mr. Lestrade."

John rolled his eyes. Sherlock ignored him.

"This way, gentlemen," said the driver, motioning them to follow her through the doors. "The car's just outside."

The car was black, of course. Long, black, and gleaming, with tinted windows. _Look,_ John thought, automatically.  _Mycroft's pimped his ride._

Then he remembered.

Remembering stung in a way he'd never have imagined it could. Evidently, while remaining eternally pissed off at Mycroft, John had nevertheless become attached to him. Perhaps that was why, as he followed Sherlock into this ridiculous limousine, he felt a kind of chill in the air, and a squirm in his stomach. The ghost of Mycroft, passing through him on its way out of the car, watching inscrutably as John climbed into someone else's sleek black vehicle.

*   *   *   *   *   *

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY FIVE**

When I woke it wasn't actually like waking up at all, which is usually gradual unless you have a real beast of an alarm clock like the one Dad tried to make me use until I threw it out the window. It felt to me as if my mother used that spray on me and then I blinked and then suddenly I was lying curled up on a sofa in a strange room and someone was holding me.

Someone was humming a tune. It was a woman's voice. I didn't know the tune but it sounded gentle and sad. My head was resting against the woman's shoulder. It felt soft and silky, like cashmere. She had her arms around my shoulders and the rest of me was curled up in her lap. I was rocking, gently, along with the tune.

It felt good until I realized I didn't know who she was or where I was.

I gave a kind of jerk and looked up.

It was my mother. She looked all different of course because she wasn't disguised as Aunt Harriet any more. She'd left off the wig and her eyes were outlined now, they looked brighter because of the dark eyeliner. Her hair was that yellow-blonde color that comes out of a bottle but looks nice all the same, and it was very short. It was curled across her head in little waves, like the actresses in those old black and white movies. I tried to remember the name of the one she looked most like. Aunt Harriet had told me about her once. Harlow. Jean Harlow. 

"Hello, sweetheart," my mother said. Her voice had a catch in it and her eyes were wet. Tears started spilling out of them as I looked at her.

"Mummy," I said, just to hear what it sounded like.

She clutched me to her. "Oh Rachel. Oh love. I can't believe it."

Her jumper really was cashmere, so it was all right in a way, being squished against it while she started crying. Her arms were holding me very tight. I like being held tight, but it was also scary because I didn't know when she would let me go.

"You're here. We're together. I've dreamed of this moment for so long. And now..."

For a while she just cried. The jumper was soft and she was warm and her neck smelled like flowers. Not flowers exactly because you could tell they weren't real flowers.  _Like_ flowers, but stronger, and there was a sharp smell with it. Perfume. That's what it was. Molly wore perfume sometimes and so did Mrs. Hudson and Miss J. Mrs. Hudson was the only one who ever really hugged me and on her you couldn't smell it cleanly because there was the alcohol and the breath mints and the powder and that smell people have when they're old.

While my mother cried I realized that she didn't smell like any of the people I had ever hugged. Aunt Harriet didn't wear scent. She had her own smell, like Dad did and like LoLo. There were more scents coming from my mother than just the perfume but they were all sweet and they all had that sort of sickly tang. It's like the aftertaste of artificial sweetner. You know somehow that it's petrochemical though you couldn't say why. LoLo actually can say why but Dad never lets him get through the whole explanation. The point is I could smell a lot of  _things_ but if there was a smell that was  _her_ then all I could say was that it was pretty elusive.

"Mummy," I finally said. "I'm squished."

My mother let her arms go slack a bit. "I'm sorry, sweetheart." She wiped the back of her eyes with one hand. A little smudge of mascara stuck to her skin. "It's so overwhelming. And I am like you that way, you know. Sudden."

I slid off her lap and toward the other end of the little fuzzy beige sofa we were sitting on. I wanted a better look at her, and to see where I was. 

It actually reminded me of the common room of my suite at the Priory School. I don't mean it _looked_ like that, because it was clearly a different place. Shape of the room and positioning of the doors and shade and texture of the carpet and so forth. I just mean it was like a dormitory. You can just tell when you're in a place like that. All the furniture was bought mainly because it's cheap and bland and hard to destroy. Nothing was chosen because someone loved it or just on a whim. Nice enough. Eggshell walls, soft light in the middle of the ceiling, furniture new. But not owned, not really, not cared for like something belonging to anybody.

I said, "How did I get here?"

My mother said, with a tearful little smile, "It was a long drive, sweetheart, and you fell asleep in the car. I carried you in. I didn't want to wake you. I changed while you were sleeping, because...I wanted you to see me as I really am when you woke up."

While she said all that my stomach was twisting into knots. She really thought I'd forgotten the motorcycle and the spray canister and the driving off the road. What she said was so obviously untrue that it reminded me that none of what she had actually said to me up to this morning, apart from the planning about picking me up, was literally true. It seems odd but that was the first moment where I knew in a final way that Broomhilde1135 never existed. All the things I had been telling BroomHilde1135 were actually things I had been telling my mother. The things I had told her were true either way. The things BroomHilde had told me were not true. At least they were not trying to tell me the truth. The truth in them was what I had to work out on my own.

I had found my mother. But I felt sad to have lost my only friend. There had never been any BroomHilde1135, apart from this stranger I was sitting next to now.

"What's the matter, Rachel?" said my mother. "You look sad."

My heart gave a little jump hearing her say my name. My stomach still felt cold.

"You lied to me," I said. "All that time. I don't know if you even really are my mother. I don't know what my mother looks like."

The teariness disappeared. She started looking angry very fast. I felt like I was falling through the floor. The last parent I had left and I was already making her mad.

"You mean they've never shown you a picture of me?" 

I shook my head.

"Do you even know my name?"

"I think it's Mary?"

My mother blinked at me for a moment, calming herself down.

"It is," she said. "But they don't call me that here. Mary was my name for my _real_ life. The one I was going to have with you." Her chest gave a heave and she stopped herself from crying. "After they took you away from me, I didn't want that name any more. Agnes is the name I chose instead, so that's what they call me here."

Agnes is from the Latin for lamb. Innocent and woolly and always being sacrificed to something or other. I decided I would keep Mary. It was a better name for a mother. I'm going to keep calling her Mary, in the story. It makes things easier.

She opened a drawer in the ugly square table that sat in the middle of the room, between the two fuzzy couches. She took out a little photo album covered in red leather. On the front were gilt letters saying  _To John, On Our Anniversary._

"This is all I have left from that time," Mary said. "I was working on it when they took you away from me. Since it was a surprise, your Dad and Sherlock didn't know about it. I had to steal it back from the house before I ran. It was very dangerous. Sherlock almost caught me. But I had to have something to remember you by."

The album lay on the table now. Mary had done her nails, somehow, in the time that had gone missing. They were red. They looked pretty. Her hands were very pale, and the skin looked soft but it was also wrinkled. She opened the album cover.

"You see," she said, pointing. "That was from our wedding day. Most of these pictures are." 

I wanted to ask her questions but I was distracted from the pictures. There was my Dad, looking so young and so happy. And my mother, also younger, also happier than she looked now, beautiful in her long white gown and with flowers in her hair. And my ex-Aunt Janine was in some of them, looking gorgeous in purple, but of course my ex-Aunt Janine was always gorgeous, that's how she got famous. Sherlock usually on the side opposite her, just behind my Dad. In the photos where he wasn't smiling he looked grim and in the ones where he did smile he looked like he was trying not to cry while having a splinter dug out of his foot.

"Where's Aunt Harriet?" I said.

"She wasn't there," Mary answered. "She and your father hated each other then." She shook her head, turning the pages. 

"They don't hate each other now," I said, because she really seemed very sad at that moment.

"I know," Mary said. "Now, they both hate me."

I was just about to say that hate is a very strong word, because that's what everyone says when you say you hate something and it's actually true, I should know, there are a lot of things I hate. But then Mary said, "Sherlock hates me now too. Of course Sherlock always hated me."

She gave a little sniff, and put her hand over her chest to smooth out the catch in her breathing.

I said, "What do you mean, 'took you away from me?'"

Mary sighed. She looked at me, and her eyes were very bright and they frightened me but I couldn't look away.

"They took you away from me," Mary said. "Sherlock planned the whole thing and your Aunt Harriet helped him do it. They tricked your father into believing I was a bad mother and then they tricked me into signing you away."

I looked at Sherlock, standing behind my Dad's shoulder. He looked unhappy. He looked like he wanted to be standing next to my Dad instead of behind him. He looked like he might do anything at all in the world in order to make that happen. And I knew Sherlock was very good at tricking people, even my Dad who knows him better than anyone. My Dad has lots of stories about that.

"They took you and they thought I would never see you again," my mother said. "Ever since that day I've been trying to find a way to contact you. Almost nine years. I knew they wouldn't know how to raise you, Rachel," Mary said, and her voice wasn't trembling now. "You see, they really have no idea who you are or why you do the things you do. But I do, Rachel.  _I do._ You're like me. You're like me and that's why they don't understand you."

While I was looking at her it all became true. In her eyes and the way her brows were shaped I could see my own face. And this thing she had planned by stealing me away for a weekend was exactly the kind of thing I would have planned myself if I had known where my mother was and how to contact her. Because it was Sudden and unusual and very clever and, now that I thought about it, quite dangerous and liable to end up getting everyone involved into a lot of trouble. And that I was mad enough to agree to it and help her with it really showed that I was just like her.

"They keep trying to make you fit in with what they think you should be," Mary said to me. "It will never work. That's why I risked--everything--to bring you here. This is the place for you, Rachel. This is where I came from. It's the only place I was ever happy. It's the only place you'll be happy."

Maybe it would be, I thought. It did seem as if we had crossed over into a different quantum universe, where things might happen that had never been possible before. Like me talking to my mother.

I said, "This room?"

My mother laughed.

"No, Rachel. This school." She put one hand on my shoulder. "Shall I show you around?"

I flipped to the end of the album.

There was a picture on the last page that wasn't from the wedding. It showed my Dad in the hospital, holding a baby in his lap and feeding it with a tiny bottle. Behind the chair he sat in there was a hospital bed. The woman lying in it was my mother. Her face was turned toward the camera and she was trying to smile, but she looked exhausted.

I had found my mother. It was really her. There was no other mother out there for me.

I closed the album.

"All right," I said.

*   *   *   *

**CHICAGO, 8:49 CST**

Not bad so far, John thought, this Chicago case. Sherlock should do more work for American millionaires. The leather banquette in the rear of the limousine was quite comfortable, and although it was too early to avail oneself of the fully stocked wet bar, it was lovely to look at. Music was being piped in from the front. A song he recognized, after a few moments of racking the part of his brain where dead popular music was stored, as "Uptown Funk." 

They leaned back against rear of the compartment, and the limousine began snaking its way toward Lake Shore Drive.

Bored with the sight of the lake going by, John let his eyes wander eventually back to Sherlock on the banquette. Sherlock's arms draped along the back of the seat, taking up far more than his fair share of space. He was looking out through the tinted windows, and thinking of something miles away from whatever he was seeing. John thought it was probably Rachel. Although the dreamy look in his heavy-lidded eyes did not quite suggest that. Nor did the subtle blush glowing in his cheeks and the scarlet of his lips.

Take yourself in hand, now, John, he thought. Everything's visible in that rearview mirror.

He glanced up to the far end of the passenger compartment, to see where the driver's attention actually was. He found himself staring at the glass partition between the compartments, yawning and trying to figure out, in a desultory kind of way, what it was about it that seemed off. He realized finally that it was fixed. There was no slot into which it could be retracted. There were no airholes. There was a little intercom that could be used to communicate but the glass itself was a barrier. Soundproofed perhaps, he thought. That would be very convenient if only they had an invisibility cloak as well.

John yawned again, giving his head a little shake. Tinted as the windows were it seemed quite close in this compartment.

He pressed the intercom button.

"Excuse me," he said. "Could we have some air back here?"

The driver gave no indication that she had heard him. 

John pushed himself into a crouch and made his way up to the glass partition. He rapped on it with his knuckles. He realized, as the glass rattled, that he had a headache. Since Rachel his tolerance had been lowered, no doubt. There wasn't a lot of time for cocktails at 221B these days.

"Hey!" John called. "Hello! You do actually have passengers back here!"

No response.

John turned back toward Sherlock. "Is she deaf? Am I invisible? What is the..."

Sherlock was asleep. He was draped practically the whole length of the banquette, one arm dangling off and grazing the floor. His mouth gaped in a cherry red half-moon. His eyelids fluttered briefly, and he let out a soft groan.

All the alarms went off. Nerves. Heart. Stomach. Spine. Hairs on the backs of the arms. No. Wrong. Danger. Out. Out out out out out.

John flung himself back down the cab to reach the doors. Trying not to breathe any deeper than he had to, he attacked first one handle, then another. None of the doors would open. Of course there would be a master lock up front. You wouldn't even have to special order that, the way they must have special-ordered that airtight partition and whatever they were using to vent the carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe straight into the passenger cabin.

Right. Manual override.

John reached into his jacket pocket and found his army knife. He flung himself on the fabric covering the inside of the door. It was quick work to tear that back and then pop off the plastic covering the lock mechanism. Another few seconds to locate the wires connecting it to the car's computer and rip them out. With the locking mechanism exposed he had a moment of panic but then his head cleared and he silently thanked God that even the manufacturers of luxury automobiles had such a universal fondness for cheap plastic parts.

The catch clicked. The door flapped open, then nearly slammed shut. John caught it on the way in. He found the metal pin that the lock was meant to catch on, and stuffed the torn upholstery around it. The door banged against it, the latch unable to grip the pin. 

The driver finally deigned to notice what was going on. The car began speeding up. 

John seized Sherlock by the legs and dragged him off the banquette. 

Without giving himself time to think about it, John flung himself on Sherlock's prone form. He slid his arms around Sherlock's back and put both hands behind his head. John dragged Sherlock's unbelievably heavy and unwieldy frame down to the door, leaning both their heads against it for a moment to catch his breath. 

And now to figure out how to get both of them out of this door without dying.

His brain was almost unequal to it. But then, miraculously, the car slowed down to a stop. They had evidently reached a traffic light.

Before John could act, the car began moving again.

John pushed off with one leg. The door flew open. He landed on the tarmac on his back, still clutching Sherlock. With the strength of delirium, John rolled them both over and over, away from the noise and the thundering traffic, till they hit the concrete barrier built to prevent the traffic from going over into the lake.

There was plenty of exhaust here, but at least there was also air.

The barrier was just a series of waist-high concrete bollards. It still took what seemed like the very last of John's strength to get Sherlock's now vaguely stirring body up and over it, and let himself down on the other side. 

They were out of the traffic now, though its thunder and whine still assailed them from behind the bollard. They were, instead, on the side of a steep little slope which ran down to a footpath that followed the contours of the lake. Bicyclists and joggers passed back and forth below them, each plugged into headphones, each apparently oblivious to the fact that two tattered, bruised, and exhaust-choked men had just rolled off the highway, and were now sliding, still locked in each other's arms, down the pebbly slope toward the path.

They fetched up, finally, a few feet short of it, against a tree trunk. John stretched Sherlock out on the scruffy spring grass, ready to start the examination. 

Sherlock's eyes opened. He sprang bolt upright. John drew back instinctively from the terrifying look in his eyes. But it was only a moment before recognition came back, and with it a stream of self-directed profanity.

"Never take the first cab," Sherlock muttered, pulling himself onto his knees and pounding the tree trunk with one fist. "Never take the first cab. What is the  _matter_ with me?"

"Sherlock, let me take a look at--"

"This is what comes of your fucking my brains out," Sherlock said, flinging an accusing forefinger at John. "I don't  _have_ them when I  _need_ them!"

"Christ!" John shouted, hands leaping into the outraged air. "Would you stop blaming my  _dick_ every time  _you_ lose your head?"

To John's surprise, Sherlock just took a deep breath, looked down at the ground on which he was kneeling, and said in a surprisingly uncertain voice, "You're right. You're right, John. I'm sorry."

"Oh my God," John said, sitting back on his heels. "Next you'll be actually thanking me for saving your life."

Sherlock nodded. "I do. Thank you. I..." 

Just as John was beginning to wonder whether this unwonted reasonableness was a sign of cranial trauma, Sherlock lifted his head, shook his curls in annoyance, and snapped, "Why should it affect me more than you, anyway?"

"Greater lung capacity," John said. "Higher blood volume. More gas inhaled, more oxygen inhibited. Should reverse itself soon. Take deep breaths."

Sherlock fixed him with an ironic glare and made a five-act opera out of the act of inhaling.

"You've treated this before," Sherlock said, looking at John closely.

John was halfway through an automatic nod when he said, "Actually, no. I can't say I have. Not that I remember. But..."

He shook his head. That feeling of being haunted, which had struck him when he saw the door of that black car opening, was hissing about him. But he couldn't explain why.

"It is amazing, Sherlock," John said, instead. "You never exercise, you eat whatever you can reach whenever you remember to, you spent your twenties injecting heroin and smoking like a factory, and yet you remain, biologically speaking, a nearly perfect specimen. I don't know how. I really don't. This one time it hurt you. Just the once. I'll treasure it forever, all the same."

From inside Sherlock's now-tattered new suit jacket, a phone began ringing.

Both John and Sherlock exploded with laughter. The idea that his mobile could actually have survived the fall seemed, all of a sudden, hilarious. When Sherlock pulled it out and saw the spiderweb of cracks networking the glass screen, he laughed even harder. He showed it to John, who literally fell over laughing. They were both still alive, and still in Chicago, and Sherlock's phone, of all things, still worked.

"Hello?" Sherlock said, waving at John to stop cackling. He pushed the speaker button and put the phone down between them.

"Mr. Holmes?" said a young man's hesitant voice. "It's Ladd from the Drake, sir."

"Oh yes," said Sherlock. "I should have thanked you for the--"

"No need, sir," said Ladd briskly. "I hope I'm not interrupting--"

"As it happens, you are not," Sherlock replied.

"But your driver is here, sir. He's been waiting for you since 8:30. Shall I tell him to come back in fifteen minutes? Half an hour?"

Sherlock became all business, instantly.

"Listen to me, Ladd," Sherlock said. "There are a few very important things I need you to do."

Ladd stifled a noise that might just have been a kind of squee.

"Anything, sir," said Ladd, a bit more soberly.

"Tell the driver you've rung our room but there's no answer. Tell him you don't know what else to do."

"Very good, sir."

"Now. Do you own a car?"

"I do, sir."

"Can you take off work for an hour or so?"

"Sir, if you require it, I am happy to develop a 24 hour stomach flu on the spot."

John could not entirely suppress a snort.

"Dr. Watson, is that you?" called Ladd's voice, with that same barely suppressed squee. 

Sherlock let out a hiss of annoyance. "Ladd, all I want is for you to come collect us and take us to our original destination. Wait until the driver has left the building to do it." 

John was somewhat startled to see Sherlock just grab for him, until he realized Sherlock was just looking for John's phone. Having extracted it, still miraculously functional, from John's inside pocket, he began looking at maps.

"We're sitting by the bike path along Lake Shore Drive, about a quarter mile north of the Fullerton exit."

"I'll be there with bells on, sir."

Before Sherlock could draw breath, Ladd hung up.

"He seems very keen," John said, evenly. "Your Ladd, I mean."

Sherlock burst into flustered protest. "John, you can't possibly--"

With their near-deaths such a recent memory, John decided not to play with him.

"You're right. I can't. It's fine. I don't care who you flirt with. I've never cared."

"I do not FLIRT."

John laughed at him. 

"I don't!" Sherlock sounded genuinely distressed. And as funny as that was, John took pity and stopped laughing.

"No. No, of course not." John watched him steam for a bit. "So we are going to our original destination, after all? There's nobody waiting at the home of Mr. Hilton Cubitt for the purpose of, for instance, killing us?"

"Oh there is," Sherlock said, instantly. "I'm nearly certain that there is. But that's exactly why we need to go there."

"Are we sure that Hilton Cubitt is even real?" John said, as the adrenaline subsided and the abrasions and swelling began to make themselves felt. "What if he was invented simply to lure us out here?"

Sherlock shook his head decisively. "I verified all that before I took the case. He is real, and the man I've been Skyping with is in fact him, and he is as far as can be known sincerely grieved by his beloved wife's real suffering. The appearance of the second driver, apparently unaware that he had been pre-empted by that rolling gas chamber, is further confirmation that the part  _he_ has played in all of this is sincere."

"But the wife is another story," John said.

"At last you grasp the salient point, John," Sherlock said. "A man who does not know his wife's real name can be presumed to be easily imposed on in other areas. Our executioner manque was sent by someone who was familiar with Mr. Cubitt's plans. She knew how to anticipate the actual driver and she knew the alias that Mr. Cubitt and I had agreed upon. The wife Mr. Cubitt loves and trusts, whoever she is, would have had little difficulty in obtaining this information. And she has been receiving messages in code for several weeks past referring to a 'mission,' which she was evidently somewhat reluctant to accept. So Mr. Cubitt was right, after all. It is of the  _utmost_ importance to the case that we interview his wife in person...and I think we can now also say that it is equally important that we have the advantage of surprise."

"In the meantime," John said, "I may as well try Harry again."

"John--" Sherlock began remonstrating. John snatched his phone out of Sherlock's aggrieved hands and called up Harry's number.

With the phone to his ear, he looked out over the lake. Some "lake," he thought. You could fit five Londons into this so-called 'lake' and have room left over. Made you realize how big the actual Atlantic ocean was. How big, wide, cold, and deep, especially when it lay between you and your child. Especially when you were listening to Harry's voicemail message for the 97th time that day.

*     *     *     *      *

**RACHEL'S BLOG, CONTINUED**

You might well imagine that once we left the room and I could look about at the place I was jolly well taking notes. Not literally of course but in my head. I noted everything. I noted for instance that the corridor we walked along had no windows. It had a cheap beige carpet and the walls were papered in a pink rosebud pattern which was sort of pretty and sort of annoying. The overhead lights were halogen which is good for the environment because they're so efficient and last so long but the light from them is a bit harsh. There was no smell apart from that funny kind of stale feeling, it's not even a smell really, that you get off the air inside a plane or any other shut-up place where the air's piped in. 

At the end of the corridor were two big sliding doors. My mother walked up to a little machine mounted near one of them and put her chin on the chinrest and one hand on a plate near the wall. A beam of red light swept her face. A light above the machine went green, and the doors opened. 

I followed her through. The room on the other side of the doors was just. Well I had never seen anything like it. It was big and round and as tall as a whole building. The whole ceiling was glass and the sun came through it and slid down the poles that ran from floor to ceiling and along the ropes and webs and steps and rubber grips and even after everything I can't really sit still and type this I'm sorry I will have to get up for a minute and run around and then come back and sit down.

There. I should stop trying to say how it made me feel and just say that this whole enormous room with a sky-ceiling was given over to climbing. Just a massive combination of all kinds of climbing things, from rock walls to towers to bridges and a whole maze zigzagging through it made of these molded plastic shapes strung together with wires so you could crawl all over them, up and up and down and down and in and out the different pathways and there were knotted ropes attached to the tops of the poles that you could climb up and trapezes to dangle from and swing on and I'm sorry I am going to have to get up again.

I stood there staring and staring at it. My mother said, "This is one of our Physical Education spaces. We have about a half-dozen."

I grabbed her so tight by the arm I think she was startled. I looked up at her and I forgot just everything and I said, "Please can I climb it? Please please please?"

The double doors opened again and a woman came through them and behind her there were two lines of children about my age. Not children actually. Girls. They were all girls. They were all of them--the woman and the girls--wearing black. Black leggings, black tops, black shoes with black rubber soles. They weren't marching exactly but you could tell they did a lot of this, walking down corridors in two straight lines just like the girls in  _Madeline._ About a dozen of them, and all you could see to tell them apart was their heads. The woman leading them stopped moving and held up a hand and they all stopped too and it was quiet.

"Alana," said my mother, to the woman leading them.

"Agnes," the woman replied. She was much younger than my mother--about Miss J's age--and her light brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. When she crossed her arms I could see the muscles in them and I thought for a moment she might be getting ready to fight or something but she just blinked at my mother as if she were waiting for something.

"This is Rachel," my mother said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "She's visiting. Do you mind if she takes PE with your class?"

"Not at all," said Alana smoothly. "Take off your shoes, Rachel, and leave off the cardigan, it might snag. Put them against the wall over there."

I had never obeyed a teacher's instruction that quickly in my entire life. I found the spot on the wall and I put down my things and I bounced back up but Alana said, "Stop, Rachel."

I was surprised and I opened my mouth but instead of yelling I stopped. I think it was maybe because the other girls were all standing so still, and all watching her.

Alana took a little silver whistle from her pocket. She put it to her lips and blew it. 

It was a beautiful little musical tone. The girls all jumped right to life and they scrambled for the equipment like a whole gang of monkeys. I scrambled too. 

I went straight for the rock wall. I looked around for a harness but there wasn't one. So I just started in. 

I haven't told you I guess how much I love climbing. I do. I've always loved it. I will climb on anything. At the Priory School there's a play yard but there's nothing on it more than six feet high. But this, this wall. I can't even tell you. The sun shining down on you, so warm and clear, and your hands and feet finding the right places as if the wall is being made up, as you climb it, especially for you. Going up and up and up and no one telling you to come down. About ten feet from the top I looked down and there was my mother looking up at me. Her almost-white hair was shining like marble and she was smiling so beautifully. It made my heart pound. 

You see grown ups don't want you to climb. They're always afraid you'll fall. Get down from there Rachel, my Dad always says, as if I'm doing the worst thing the world. Get down from there, it's not safe. But it  _is_ safe. It  _is_ safe because I'm better at climbing than he is and I know it and my whole body knows it and it's always telling me I'm safe. But my mother, she knew. I could tell from how she was looking at me, even that far down. She knew what my body knew. She knew I could go all the way to the top, higher even, and I would be safe. Because I'm a climber. It's like a superpower. I could go up forever, all the way to the moon, and I  _know_ I would never, ever fall.

The other girls were all swarming away. They were laughing and there was this one girl sort of dangling from one of the trapeezes pointing me out to the ones below and saying,  _look! Look how high up she is!_ And they looked up at me and I could see they were thinking,  _I want to be where she is._

Never in all my life had another girl ever wanted to be me or wanted anything I could do or anything I had. 

I looked around at all the sunlight and the poles and ropes and webs and wires and the girls climbing and I felt what my mother had said I would feel. I felt happy.

*       *       *       *       *

**CHICAGO, SUNDAY, 9:56**

 "I thought in America all the cars were big," John said.

He and Sherlock were jostled together as the Leaf swung onto Lake Shore Drive. Ladd glanced up into the rearview mirror and gave John a look which managed to be both bitchy and adoring at the same time.

"Don't believe everything you hear, honey," Ladd said, as they jounced into a particularly large pothole. "Especially if it's about size."

"Will there be many more of these arch double-entendres?" Sherlock inquired, politely. "Only I left my headphones back at the hotel."

John looked back down at his mobile. No matter how much he stabbed away at it, he could not make Harry answer the phone. He saw Sherlock glance at him, but of course he couldn't deign to look concerned. Being concerned was John's job. 

He checked the text messages. There was a new one from a half hour ago. HOW'S LOLO HOLDING UP?

John typed back, PICK UP THE SODDING PHONE AND YOU CAN HEAR ALL ABOUT IT.

A few moments of rattling and vibrations as the car sped past the lake. And then, CAN'T RIGHT NOW. MUSEUM. EVERYTHING FINE APART FROM THE SURL.

John sighed.

HOW'S THE WEATHER?

Sherlock and Ladd were now involved in a conversation about Boston. Apparently bits of it were underwater, but the inhabitants were struggling gamely on. John found he didn't really care about anything except the next incoming text.

WIND STILL FROM THE EAST.

John let out an exasperated noise.

NO I MEAN THE ACTUAL WEATHER. HOW IS IT.

The car screeched to a halt at a stoplight. His mobile remained inscrutable for a few moments, then lit up again.

WIND STILL FROM THE EAST.

"What the--"

Sherlock looked over at him, on the alert.

"What is it?" he said.

Shaking his head, John typed in, OK MR JARNDYCE WILL YOU JUST FUCKING TELL ME WHAT THE WEATHER IS.

Sherlock was looking over his shoulder when the text popped up. WIND STILL FROM THE EAST.

The phone disappeared. Before John could even verify that Sherlock had snatched it from him, Sherlock was halfway into a text. It was, for some reason, WHAT IS THE AIRSPEED VELOCITY OF AN UNLADEN SWALLOW?

The phone took a moment to think about it. Then it said, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? AN AFRICAN SWALLOW, OR A EUROPEAN SWALLOW?

John couldn't help giving out just a tiny chuckle, old as the joke was.

Sherlock typed in, HOW FAST CAN A SWALLOW FLY IF IT'S NOT CARRYING ANYTHING?

There was a pause. Then the mobile said, cheerfully, FUCKED IF I KNOW, JOHN.

Sherlock's fingers flew again. MOOSE CARPATHIA HEMINGWAY SCHNITZELPUDDING

"Schnitzelpudding?" John said. The mobile said, HA HA. SO FUNNY.

Now nearly trembling with agitation, Sherlock punched back at the mobile. ERGETEM WILL DHULAMAN YOU LEDERHOSEN WALLABY TELL ARANCIA ME MOLYNEUX WHAT CIRCUMMINXERE THE WERODA BLAZES OINOPA PONTON IS TARAMOSALATA GOING YALAHABIBTI ON

John said, quietly, "Sherlock, have you lost your mind?"

Sherlock shushed him. He was poised over that screen as if it were about to cough up the meaning of life.

SORRY. HAVE TO RUN. TEXT LATER.

The chill settled in John's stomach first. Then it began to soak him all the way through, from the inside out.

"What the fuck is this?" John said, in a low and shaking voice. "What have I been talking to?"

"I don't know exactly," Sherlock said, grimly. "But whatever it is, it just failed the Turing test."

Hearing it confirmed turned John's body into a cold lump of stone.

"We have to go back," John said. 

"What's that?" Ladd looked up in the mirror again. "You want me to turn around?"

"No," Sherlock snapped, decisively. "Keep driving. Fast as you can."

"Sherlock--" John began. Somewhere inside his frozen body, there was a bomb just beginning to go off. 

Sherlock gripped him by the shoulders. He held John tight and stared into his eyes.

"I know," Sherlock said, quietly but urgently. "I know. That's why we have to get there. Don't you realize?" he demanded. "Can't you see?"

"No!" John was alarmed to hear in his own voice that he was near tears. "I don't see what--"

"It's the week-end," Sherlock shot back, dropping his voice to an intense whisper so Ladd wouldn't hear, still grasping John's shoulders. His grip hurt, but John didn't want him to let go. It was the only thing that kept him from flying apart. "The school won't expect Rachel back till Monday. We're out of the country. It's the perfect opportunity. All you have to do is subdue Harry, take her mobile, set up this--algorhythm--that uses your old text history to simulate her side of a conversation--"

"Opportunity for WHAT?" John demanded.

Sherlock swallowed. He tightened his grip.

"To take Rachel."

John's body started shuddering. 

"Sh--don't--she's alive, John," Sherlock said, rapidly. "She's alive, she must be alive. Probably unharmed."

"How do you know?" John forced out, while his insides began to implode.

"This is not a murder plot, John," Sherlock rapped out. "For murder, especially the way THESE people do it, all you need is one unguarded moment and for a child at a boarding school there are millions of those every day. Whoever did this needed time. They needed us to be out of reach, they needed a couple of days during which Rachel didn't have to be accounted for. WE are the ones who were supposed to be assassinated. WE are the collateral damage. Rachel is the objective," Sherlock said, giving John a shake. "Rachel _alive and well_."

"How do you know?" John realized he was acting like the faux-Harry algorithm. He didn't care. It was all he could say.

"There was an incoming message on my mobile this morning," Sherlock said. "From a number I didn't recognize, but it was from England, in Sussex. It...well, I thought it was just Janine drunk-dialing me again, but now--"

"Drunk-dialing you _again_?" John said.

"But now I realize, the slurring...she was trying to alert me, but someone must have got to her, she was losing consciousness but she was still trying to--"

"Meaning she's drunk-dialed you before?" John interrupted. 

"My God, John, PAY ATTENTION!" Sherlock shouted.

Ladd looked back at them. "Is everything all--"

"JUST DRIVE!" Sherlock roared.

Into the silence that followed, John dropped a small, carefully controlled, "Please."

"As you wish," Ladd said.

"Thank you," John replied.

"Don't you see," Sherlock began again, calmer now. "If you were planning to abduct Rachel and you knew that Harry was scheduled to collect Rachel at school and you knew that nobody at the Priory School has actually met Harry in the flesh then what's the easiest way to do it? Delay Harry somehow and send someone else posing as her to collect Rachel. How do you delay Harry? What's the only way you CAN delay Harry when Rachel's well-being is at stake?"

John sighed. "Sex."

"Love," Sherlock said. "Call it love. Nil nisi bonum."

John's palpitating heart froze so quickly he could feel it crack.

"You don't think--" he began.

"John," Sherlock said, carefully. "We don't know. We simply don't know. We need to get back over there and find out. And that's why we're going to Mr. Cubitt's mansion. Because whoever lured us over here and set up our execution is either masterminding this plot or taking orders from the woman who is."

John blinked, and tried to focus, and tried not to faint. 

"You know who's behind this, then," John said.

"Don't you?"

John shook his head. He couldn't trust his voice any more.

"Those coded messages," Sherlock said. "The last four letters. A blank blank A. I didn't tell you because..." Sherlock looked down for a moment, shaking his head, then back up. With bitter irony, he said, "I didn't want you to worry. But all of those messages are signed with the same acronym. AGRA."

For a moment, the whole universe flickered, as if it might just go out.

"Mary," John said.

He felt sick.

"I know," Sherlock said. "I know. I know. But John."

John shook Sherlock's grip off him. He curled up, arms around his stomach, head against the window, eyes closed, taking shallow breaths.

"She won't harm her, John," Sherlock said. "She's done all this because she wants to keep her."

After a few more moments, Sherlock said, anxiously, "John?"

Rachel. 

"John. We will find her."

Mycroft.

"We will get her back, John."

Harry.

"Look at me."

John shook his head. Sherlock grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. John looked at him. He couldn't look away. John had never, in any dream or any nightmare, seen a human face with that expression. Hard as iron, burning like a magnesium flare, and you could hear the flickering wings of a thousand furies and the rumbling of all the thunderbolts in heaven.

"Say it. We will find her."

"We will."

"Believe it," Sherlock insisted.

"I do."

The car had stopped moving. 

"If I might take a moment, gentlemen," said Ladd, in his most subdued and professional tone. "We've arrived."

The car had pulled over. They weren't on Lake Shore Drive any more. It almost looked as if they weren't in the city at all. They were looking through an enormous wrought-iron gate, on the other side of which was a lawn the size of Hampton Court's, sweeping away toward an enormous brick mansion in the distance, surrounded by gigantic oak trees.

"Thank you, Ladd," Sherlock said. "You've saved our lives today. Might I make one final request?"

"Goodness," Ladd said. "You make it sound very serious."

He smiled, uneasily. 

"Could you possibly lay your hands on a couple of FedEx uniforms?"

Ladd looked immensely relieved.

"Absolutely, sir." 

"Text me when you have them."

"Not a problem, sir."

"Thank you, Ladd."

Sherlock unbuckled and opened the door. John followed. To anyone else, Sherlock would have looked cool as a cucumber and completely unperturbed. But John was not anyone else.

"You can go now," Sherlock said, leaning in the passenger side window. "Thank you."

"My pleasure," said Ladd.

The Leaf puttered off down the lane. John looked up at the enormous facade of the house.

"Let's do this carefully," Sherlock said. "Whatever's in there, it's the only thing that can lead us to Rachel."

John swallowed. He nodded. Sherlock nodded back. They set off together, together, each of them silent as the grave.

END CHAPTER


	8. A.G.R.A.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story was written before series 4 aired. This means that my depiction of AGRA has nothing whatever to do with the backstory for Mary that we eventually get in "The Six Thatchers." Remember, in the world of "Prior Engagements," the canon series 4 never happened. Enjoy!

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY SIX**

The New Circle School says they do project based learning but they do not do it properly. That was what I thought when I saw the maths classroom. There was a big blue plastic box in the middle of it, two and a half meters high, turned upside down so the bottom was facing up. There was a small hole cut into the center of the bottom of the box. All the way up the sides of the box there were tiny rectangular openings, scattered in a pattern that wasn't regular but wasn't entirely random. I mean that the openings were all lined up. You couldn't see the grid but there must have been one because they were all located at the intersections of imaginary horizontal lines (8cm apart) and imaginary vertical ones (5 cm apart). Beneath these openings there were little stubs of plastic pointing out. Some of the openings were glowing from the lamp or whatever that was inside the box and some of them seemed to have been shuttered and only let light through at the edges. The rule was, if the rectangular opening was all lit up, you couldn't use the peg underneath it.

So the thing was they gave you a piece of string that was 14cm long, and you had to figure out how you could use that string to get all the way up to the top of the box and into the center hole, without using any pegs under lit-up openings. Since the lights changed every 2 minutes at random, you had to have a plan that could be modified as you were applying it. And you had to make this plan without touching the box. You could look at it and walk around it but you couldn't touch it. You had to work out a plan with a pencil and a piece of paper. You weren't allowed to measure the box either. You had to guess. Estimate, really, because it's not a guess. Sherlock taught me how to estimate things. It really bugs my Dad because I'm always right.

It was the biggest challenge anyone had ever given me in a classroom. I looked at the blue box and listened to Aminta explain and I thought, this is what they should be doing at New Circle School and then I wouldn't have to entertain myself by imagining the numbers dancing.

I did a lot of calculations. The first few plans I came up with fell down because there was a bit at the top of the box where practically all the openings were lit up all the time. But then I realized that there was a way to do it that would be just possible as long as you could go round the corner to the other side, horizontally, whenever you needed to do it. I thought it was a brilliant plan but I could see some practical problems and I wasn't sure we had all the data so I took my paper and I went up to Aminta, she was all in black too but with a big pouf of dark curly hair and the most brilliant eyes. She was sitting on a kind of tall stool, watching us. They weren't much on desks at this place, I had noticed. Or paper. I mean we had paper to do our sums and measuring on. But no paper on the walls. They were bare, and they seemed to be lined with a kind of frosted glass. And there were no windows.

I went up to Aminta and said, "I need more data before I can proceed."

Aminta looked at me. She didn't smile, though she didn't seem angry. I thought in fact that she didn't seem much of anything. It was hard to know what she was thinking.

"You're Rachel, aren't you," she said. "You're the visitor."

I said, "I suppose the not being all in black is a bit of a giveaway."

Aminta seemed not to be at all bothered by what I suppose I can see now is an unnecessarily smart remark. She looked at me without changing her expression at all and said, "Return to your seat, please. You have everything necessary to solve the problem."

So as not to get thrown out of class on the very first day I visited, I said, very politely, "I'm sorry, but I just want to know, this piece of string, is it meant to just be rope or can we posit that it has some kind of sticky cup or grappling hook or something at the end of it? Only if it doesn't I don't see how you could go round the corner, but nobody's mentioned it and I want to get it right so I'm asking."

Aminta just said, in exactly the same tone of voice, "Please return to your seat."

"But what kind of rope is it? You can't not tell us that. If it's an abstract problem then it should be all abstract but if it's concrete then it should be all concrete. Straight up you could make a noose with a slipknot and throw it over the peg. That's what I've been planning on although it takes some length off the rope. But round the corner you wouldn't be able to see the peg. So mathematically that string could go round the corner but practically I don't know how it would unless I can posit something on the end of it that can grab and hold even if you throw it blind and also has some weight so its momentum would carry the--"

"Rachel," Aminta said. "Return to your seat. Third time."

"But--" I am afraid I was waving the paper at her, a bit.

And then everyone in the entire room--except my mother, she was watching from over in the corner--I mean Aminta and all the students--they all stopped what they were doing, and sat up, and looked at me. And they all said, at exactly the same time, "Please return to your seat."

It was the creepiest thing ever.

It's not that it made them seem like androids because they all had different voices and you could hear them all and there were different accents and different speeds. They were all obviously still human. That was the thing that made it creepy. How did they all know exactly when to speak exactly at the same time and WHY were they doing it?

I was so surprised I just stood there looking around at them. Nobody looked angry. Nobody was smiling. Nobody looked as if she were having any kind of emotion at all at that moment. 

"I only--" I began.

They did it again.

"Please return to your seat."

The second time made me wonder what had happened to the last girl who refused to return to her seat. 

"Or else what happens?" I said, trying to make it sound curious and not full of attitude, because I really was curious.

"Please return to your seat." From all of them.

I waited. Nobody said a word. They all sat, hands folded, waiting.

I returned to my seat. What else could I do?

As soon as I was back at my seat, they all snapped right back to work. 

I looked over to see how my mother was reacting to all this. But she wasn't where she'd been standing before. I could just see her on her way out the sliding door. She blew me a kiss as it closed behind her.

I hoped that meant she was going off on an errand and planning to come back. As opposed to leaving me here forever, with all these girls who looked perfectly normal now--except for the all black--and were scribbling away and making noise and crumpling up pieces of paper when the equations went wrong. 

All right then, I thought. Assume a grappling hook.

*    *      *     *     *

**CHICAGO, SUNDAY, 10:02 AM**

Mrs. Elsie Cubitt rolled over in bed, squinting at the clock on the gilded end table. She wondered if she could risk it. Since accepting the mission, she had been staying in bed most of the morning, staggering wan-faced and hollow-eyed down to the kitchen at about eleven o’clock. It was barely ten o’clock now, and if she got up too early or seemed insufficiently depressed it might come back to bite her later. Hilton was extremely sentimental, at least regarding her; but he was not a fool. And she knew, whatever they were telling each other at the hub, that although it was after all Chicago, the unexplained disappearance of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from the Drake Hotel was not something you could expect the media to ignore. Sherlock was bigger over here than over there, nowadays.

She rolled back to the other side, letting out a distressed groan, trailing her long, disordered blonde locks picturesquely across the white pillows of their king-sized bed. Since the messages began arriving he had set up a whole-house security system that allowed him to monitor the bedroom. As she couldn't know when he was watching--it was always a safe assumption; he was spending most of his time at home these days watching her--she had to act the part, even alone. But thinking about the whole assignment that morning did give her quite a genuine headache. The entire mission was simply so irrational. There was so little harm Sherlock could do, without Big Brother's help—especially now that 85% of Britons had an unfavorable impression of him. It made about as much sense as executing the Romanovs. Just wiping out the whole clan, out of hatred or fear.

She sat up in bed. She plunged her face into her hands, sighing into them for a few minutes. It was difficult to look properly languid when she was in a fever of anticipation. She'd been assured that the agent entrusted with the kill was reliable; the method, which was easy enough to work out from the instructions she'd been given, seemed certain enough; and in a way it was comforting to think that Sherlock's last memories would be of comfort and luxury. He'd never tasted much of either, poor man, for all the time he spent around the rich and famous. And from all you saw in the media, it was really almost a mercy killing. The defeat of Mycroft's faction had ruined Sherlock, personally and professionally. Such a pity. If only he'd chosen the winning side.

But she didn't _know,_ and she couldn't without checking YouTube for the message. And as she couldn't go online without breaking character, she had to wait until she’d got into the bathroom, which was the one place she had begged Hilton not to install the security cameras. Bathroom. Such a pedestrian word for such a beautiful place. It was a vision in marble, installed by Hilton at the height of his infatuation with her, and built for her use alone—except when she invited him in to share the hot tub. She jokingly referred to it, before all this happened, as her ‘office,’ because she spent so much time in there. And a lot of that time was actually spent soaking in the tub, breathing the perfumed bubble bath and thanking a kind fate that she was in a mansion in Chicago instead of, for instance, a terrorist training camp in Syria.

Papa may have and mama may have. But God bless the child who’s got her own.

She couldn’t wait till eleven. She had to know. If anything had gone wrong, she would need to begin managing the consequences immediately. She could name several individuals who now held quite advanced positions in the organization who would rejoice at the opportunity to terminate her with extreme prejudice, to say nothing of deep personal satisfaction.

Fitfully, she rolled herself over to the edge of the bed. She sat up, dangling her legs and staring into space, for a good five minutes. Then she pushed herself wearily onto her feet, pulled her nightdress off over her head, and shuffled toward the bathroom door, dropping her nightdress crumpled onto the floor behind her.

She turned the satin-smooth and beautifully curved handle on the white painted door, and pushed it in. Her feet padded across the cold marble tiles. She leaned heavily on the sink with both hands, studying her face in the mirror.

Not bad. For someone whose last ten years had been what they were, really, not bad.

She ran the taps into the free-standing porcelain pedestal sink, brushed her teeth, splashed water on her face. She turned off the taps, picked up a white hand towel, and gently blotted her face with it. Then, with a yawn and a stretch, she turned toward the tub in the corner.

There was a dark shape perched on the edge of the tub, like a raven brooding over a heap of carrion.

Before her mind identified the image, she heard the door slam shut behind her.

She swung around. Outlined against the white-painted oak of the door was the short and now even stockier form of poor old John Watson.

Alive.

She glanced from him back to the black omen of doom crouched on the tub. Neither had a gun. Best take her chances with John.

She hadn’t even completed the motion toward him when the black shape croaked out, “I wouldn’t.”

No, she thought, looking more intently at John’s face. Perhaps not. Better try her luck with Sherlock. He looked quite grim, and his suit jacket and trousers told her the whole story about why it was that he and John were not both dead and on their way into the foundation of a skyscraper right now.

“What do you think?” she said, sauntering toward him, playing with one of her long blonde locks. “Of the hair, I mean.”

“It doesn’t suit you,” said Sherlock.

“Well,” she said, letting her hand fall gently against the curve of her hip. “The rest hasn’t changed, has it?”

She stopped just short of the step up to the bath, on which Sherlock's feet were resting. It was all coming back to her: the body language, the wicked grin, the ironic lift of the eyebrows. Donning her best insinuating smile, she reached a hand out to stroke the underside of Sherlock's chin. His eyes were riveted on her face, in exactly the way she remembered; and he would therefore be unaware of the fist that her other hand was forming.

She heard John's feet move behind her.

Dropping Sherlock's chin, she spun around in time to see John swinging for her. She brought her fist up and jabbed him right under the ribs. He fell gasping onto the marble floor. 

I've still got it, she thought, spinning around and aiming a kick at Sherlock's head.

Her foot did not connect. Instead, something tightened like a vise around her ankle, and then, briefly, she was flying. Downward, with the bottom of the hot tub rushing up toward her.

The edge of the tub struck her right in the gut. With red stars of pain bursting all over her vision field, she tried to brace herself on the bottom, save her head. She couldn't move her arms. They were twisted behind her back. Her head cracked against the tub floor just as two metal rings clicked into place, locking her wrists together behind her back. 

Something was digging into her back. Sherlock was sitting on her or kneeling or something. Nausea roiled in her stomach. Her head throbbed. Her vision was clearing, slowly, but she couldn't get her breath to slow down. It was coming in shallow. Her lungs were trying, but the muscles around her ribcage were strained and tight. She fixed her eyes on the white tub floor, trying to shake the feeling of panic, trying to think.

A hand grabbed the back of her neck. She fought against it. It did not budge. It held her there, staring at the floor of the tub. She heard the click of the tub drain stopper. Then the screech of water coming up the pipes, then the rushing cataract. Water bubbled along the floor of the tub, covering the surface, beginning to climb the walls.

"That was a mistake," Sherlock hissed at her, tightening his grip on her neck. "You said it yourself. Know when you're beaten."

She tried laughing. It came out more like a cough. The water level began inching higher. She could feel cold spray on her face, and the air in which her head now swam began to chill.

"It's your choice, Irene," Sherlock said. "How would you like to have this conversation? Face to face, or CIA-style?"

His voice was still calm. Calmer than it she had ever known it to be, actually. The fact that he was manhandling her naked body didn't seem to be impressing him at all. As for John, she could only assume that he was the one manning the taps, and that he was responsible for the frigid temperature of the water that was rising to engulf her head.

Obey now, exact revenge later.

"I'd prefer face to face, of course," she said, into the rising water.

The taps turned. The water stopped. The drain opened with a burp, and the water began swirling away. The pressure on the back of her neck eased. Whatever was digging into her back was removed. Her wrists were still manacled behind her back.

Awkwardly, she flopped herself around until she was sitting on the tiled step leading up to the tub, with her back braced against the wall. She looked up at Sherlock through a screen of tangled and damp hair. His fingers reached forward and brushed the hair behind her ear. His touch was really almost tender. She still had a hook in him, somewhere. Just find the right way to twitch the line.

"You never meant it even for a moment," she said, smiling up at Sherlock, and forcing herself not to start looking around to see where John was.

"Torture is the tool of the incompetent," said Sherlock. "For the resourceful and the clever, there are always alternatives."

He pulled a mobile with a cracked screen out of his pocket.

"As you are married to my client, and as he does, for reasons best known to himself, appear to care for you, I am of course reluctant to damage you in any way that might inconvenience him. However, if you have not told us what we need to know within the next fifteen minutes," Sherlock cut in, glancing at his watch, "your soi-disant husband will receive an email to which I have attached photos downloaded in years gone by from your former website, along with some of the information you had stored on that precious phone of yours, none of which is still sensitive from a political and security point of view, but much of which will strike him as EXTREMELY sensitive from a personal point of view. The fact that he has married a woman who has never told him the full truth even once since the moment she met him is, of course, liable to be quite alarming to him in and of itself. The shock of it alone causes rather a violent revulsion of feeling, does it not, John?"

"It does."

John's voice didn't sound like him at all. Low and hoarse and very strained. She turned her head to see where it had come from.

"Eyes front, Irene," Sherlock snapped.

John must be actually standing in the tub, behind her. Otherwise he'd be visible, if only peripherally. She could feel him back there; hear his breathing.  

"And if you get what you want?"

"We would be open to negotiating a compromise."

"Meaning what exactly?"

"We might for instance invent something to tell Mr. Cubitt that would explain the coded messages and your...indisposition, without telling him the unpleasant truth."

He thought he was being so tough, driving such a hard bargain. When after all, his bargaining at all was proof that she still owned a piece of him.

She lifted an eyebrow. She tried to lean forward and put her chin in her hand, but of course she couldn't.

"Ask away then," she said. 

Retreating from her smoldering look, Sherlock lowered the toilet seat cover with one hand and sat down on it, drawing his feet up, wrapping his arms around his knees. With his head on one side, he studied her for a moment, the mobile in one hand.

"Let's start with what we know," Sherlock began. "Your name is not Elsie Cubitt, nor was it ever Irene Adler. From the fact that "Adler" is not so very distant from "Adela," which is what I would call your 'real' name if anything about you were real in the slightest, one might infer that you had more invested in that persona than in your current one, though you have taken the drastic step of becoming a blonde."

That bastard.

He had cracked the code.

Of course in his prime she wouldn't have made that gamble. But he'd been in decline for five years, and it was elegant: as she couldn't prevent Hilton from discovering the messages planning the mission, why not make the same messages _part_ of the mission?

This was not the first time her love of elegance had caused her trouble in the field. She hoped it wouldn't be the last.

"If it's all the same to you," Sherlock went on, "I'll carry on with 'Irene.' The name Adela means nothing to me, though it evidently meant quite a bit to you. The first three messages are identical. ADELA. REPORT FOR DUTY. AGRA."

And at any rate, it wasn't supposed to be possible. The Dancing Men code had survived every form of decryption software invented since 1995. As long as you took care to keep using new clips, it should not be solvable. No two dancers performed the same move in precisely the same way. There was too much variation between repeated letters for an automated program to cope with, and too much extraneous information for a human solver. 

"After this, of course, the messages become slightly more elaborate. ADELA. REPORT OR FACE CONSEQUENCES. AGRA."

Of course she was naked; but that didn't entirely explain how cold she felt at this moment.

"Then evidently Mummy got cross enough to use both your Christian names," Sherlock said, holding up the mobile and reading slowly for emphasis. "ADELA GISELLE. REPORT OR FACE CONSEQUENCES. AGRA."

She looked down at her feet, splayed there on the tiled floor. The polish on her nails was chipped; she'd let it go after her 'depression' started. 

"Oh, yes, and this one," Sherlock added. "ADELA. ACTION ALPHA APPROVED. 24 HOURS. REPORT. AGRA."

She couldn't quite repress a shudder. Though that might have been because she felt John's hands come to rest on her shoulders. Or rather, on the slope between the shoulder and the neck. Thumbs at the back of her neck, fingers uncomfortably close to her windpipe.

"We can assume that 'action alpha' designates one of the aforementioned 'consequences,' and that it was rather a nasty one," Sherlock went on. 

"Take your hands off me," she said, not wanting to give John the satisfaction of looking up.

"Ah. So sorry. I should have explained," Sherlock said. "Think of John as a polygraph. You see," he went on, as the pressure of John's fingers increased slightly, "it's very easy to lie to John, when he's only looking and listening. But he's a doctor, you know. It's all in the hands."

She could no longer ignore the pressure of his fingers, though it was not yet dangerous or painful.

"I've found it's actually quite difficult to lie to John when he's touching you. He's quite sensitive to the small changes in body temperature. So he'll be monitoring your truthfulness, while we talk."

"So that's what you like," she said, with an ironic smile. "Breath play. If you'd only told me so, ten years ago."

Sherlock shook his head. 

"This is not a game," he said. "John can't play games like that. His reflexes are not entirely under his own control."

John's voice broke out again. "Get on with it."

It was a horrible sound, John's voice. It was full of ugly and awful things at which she could only half-guess. It was as threatening and loathsome as the touch of his hands.

"So you reported," Sherlock said, briskly, as if nothing terrible were taking place in the unseen space just behind her head. "I assume you did this by posting your own coded message at a site you knew your correspondent would frequent."

She nodded.

"And then this interesting message arrived: 'POLLUXFALL INIT.' Our stint in your deathmobile has provided the necessary context for what had been a rather cryptic note. I assume that 'Polluxfall' is the code name of an operation planned, many years previously, for my termination, at whatever time it became necessary. I imagine that operation Castorfall was carried out some five years ago, and that this message was to let you know that you were to have the privilege of initiating the follow-up."

"Really, I don't see why you need me here for this," she said, moving to get up.

John's hands pressed her back down onto the tiled step. She let them do it. Hilton would be in his study, far away on the first floor; but commotion was still risky. If he interrupted this interview, the only way Sherlock could justify the situation would be by telling him everything. And she found that in the end, she was unwilling to contemplate that. She had reached what, for her line of work, was a fairly advanced age without ever having been stripped. What happened with Mycroft over the Coventry mission was bad. Nearly fatal, in fact. But she had not actually been stripped. She had been defeated as Irene Adler, and fled as Irene Adler, and been rescued from certain death--by her current tormentor--as Irene Adler. Nobody had yet had the power and the opportunity to tear away one of her identities in front of the people who had invested in it. 

She had delayed responding to those peremptory messages--not just out of fear, not just out of some idiotic hope that they might give up and leave her alone, but also because she was so damn angry. To be reminded that she could be stripped, for anyone, at any time.  

"After that it's mostly technical," Sherlock replied, without acknowledging the sarcasm. "Requests for dates, times, locations, names. Since we don't have your side of the conversation, nothing gives away the identity of the target; but last night Hilton did forward me this one: 'LOCKED IN. STAY. REPORT HOME' and then there's a long nonsensical string which must represent a YouTube URL. That was where they were planning to post the news of our demise."

And right now, she had no idea what was up at that URL. She wondered what the agent entrusted with the kill was planning to do, and how far she'd be able to run before she was finally terminated.

"That message was to inform you that the plan was in motion, that you were to remain in your current position playing your current role, and that you could visit the link to verify that the assassination had taken place."

A gentle sigh of boredom escaped her lips. He so loved hearing himself talk, especially when he was right.

John's fingers twitched slightly.

"You're absolutely right, Irene," Sherlock bit off. "So tedious, all this. Nothing we haven't been through together before. A little assassination between friends. No, that's not what any of this is about, Irene. The fact that you did your best to get us killed doesn't bother me in the slightest, at this moment. All I want to know is everything that _you_ know about AGRA."

She had been trained to respond to shock by staying still. It came in handy, at the moment.

"AGRA is the person who authorized the mission," she said, trying to cling to the smile. "I thought you'd already deduced that."

Sherlock's own smile vanished.

"Yes and no," he said.

The sudden increase in pressure around her neck spooked her. Just long enough to have given something away. She didn't know how she'd done it. But the purr seemed to be rumbling in his chest now, growing bit by bit into a roar.

"A.G.R.A.," Sherlock said, standing up and leaning toward her, hands on knees, peering into her face. "Mary told us it stood for her real name. Mycroft later discovered that name to be Agnes Grace Rowena Addesley. He never told me  _how_ , exactly."

Oh dear God. Agnes Grace. That little bitch. She wasn't even--she'd been wiped ten years ago. Could they have taken her  _back?_ Jesus, they must be desperate. After she herself had botched Castorfall 1.0, they'd posted her to Pakistan and then burned her. Agnes had made a much worse shambles of Castorfall 2.0. Getting entangled with the mark was nothing new. She herself had failed to prevent that on Castorfall 1.0. That was the biggest failure of her professional career; she couldn't think of it, really, without blushing. But to persuade yourself that you had genuine feelings, that your pretended love was real, was a failing so common among the operatives that it was not even really punished as long as the mission itself succeeded. To actually bear the mark's  _child_ was a direct violation of protocol and punishable by Action Alpha. How could Agnes still be working after that? How could she even still be  _alive?_

What if Agnes...wasn't working? What if...

Oh no. Had she...had she just executed an unauthorized mission?

"Agnes Grace," Sherlock mused. "Adela Giselle. Saxon stoutness versus Gallic elegance. Coincidence about the initials, perhaps. So many A names in this case."

No. No, there was no guarantee that it even was Agnes. Sherlock was jumping to conclusions based on the little he knew. Agnes had always been a lone wolf. Even before being wiped she didn't have the authority to order a mission or to commandeer materiel. Someone had to have authorized this assassination. 

But it had been years since she'd heard from the hub. She had almost come to believe they'd forgotten about her. If Agnes were back in the game, nobody would have told her.

"Adela. Agnes," Sherlock's voice went on. "And of course Anthea."

From behind her, she heard a sharp intake of breath that stopped just short of being a gasp.

"But these are not names at all, are they?" Sherlock said softly. "They are essentially serial numbers. Each operative is stamped with one before going into the field. It is a unique combination of four names, the acronym of which is always AGRA. A genetic code of sorts. The only name to which you will always answer, no matter how many people you have become."

Her shoulders twitched in an involuntary shudder. Her mind, unfortunately, was blank.

"Your full name identifies you personally. The acronym identifies the organization that created you."

The shudder didn't stop. It shook more and more of her body. Her teeth began to chatter. 

Sherlock looked at her, impassively. Then he took off his battered and dusty suit jacket. 

"John," he said, nodding at the man behind her.

His hands lifted off her. He stepped out of the tub and walked around to where Sherlock had been sitting. Sherlock, himself, touched her on the shoulder, gently leaning her forward so that he could drape his jacket around her shoulders, settling it over her arms and buttoning it at the top in front.

Somehow this caused her to burst into tears.

Sherlock sat next to her on the step. She heard his voice in her ear, soft and gentle, almost tender.

"What does AGRA stand for, Irene?"

It was touching, his attachment to her old self. It was more than she would have expected from him. There was something there, after all. Thinking that kept the tears coming.

"You can't protect me from them," she said.

"No," Sherlock replied, quietly. "But one thing we  _can_ do is ensure that Hilton is still willing to protect you. As long as you tell us what we need to know."

It was almost impossible to say the words. Feeling how much her body hated to form them, somehow, pushed her over the line she had been afraid to cross.

"It originally stood," she said, and stopped. 

"Yes, Irene," Sherlock said, patiently. "Go on. It will be all right."

"It stood for...Abandoned Girls' Reclamation Academy."

Don't cry. Don't cry, she told herself, it goes against all your training. Don't cry. You are not four years old any more, you are not standing at the bottom of that pole thinking  _how in the world will I ever._ You are not a chubby little child squeezing into her first martial arts tunic and feeling, ten minutes in, as if death would be a kindness compared to this form of exercise. You are not that girl any more, you don't even remember that girl's name. Nobody does. She never existed. Stop letting her out. Stop letting her cry.

"And where is it located, Irene?" Sherlock said.

She snuffled, wishing she could wipe her eyes and nose.

"I don't know. Somewhere in England."

"You don't  _know_ ," Sherlock said, and the voice assumed, not menace exactly, but some extra weight.

"We're brought in as young children," she said. "None of us remember how. And we don't leave again until we're field-ready. And once you leave the hub, you never go back. Not unless they tap you."

"For the administration, you mean," Sherlock said.

At least he had the decency to make it easy for her.

"And you were abandoned?"

Long before AGRA. Oh, long, long before. Before the day she was even born.

"Originally I think we came from orphanages, or from the streets," she said, dully. "I was taken from my mother by child protective services. Before placing me they gave me some tests. Someone down at AGRA must have liked the results."

"You lived there for years," Sherlock said. "You're highly intelligent. You must have some conjectures about its location."

"It had no windows and they never let us out and you couldn't pay me to go back there. That's all I've retained."

"Make another attempt," Sherlock replied. "Please."

"It might have been near the sea," Irene said. "I think I might remember a smell of salt water. But I might have dreamed it."

"And who was in charge, when you were there?"

He put a hand on her forearm, gently. 

She shook her head. "It was a woman named Astoria Gillian. I'm sure she's dead now."

"There was no one above her?" Sherlock pressed. 

Everything was suddenly so still inside her that she thought her heart might have actually stopped.

"There was someone above her," Sherlock said.

She couldn't move or speak. She just waited.

"Who was it?"

Everything seemed to have disappeared. There was nothing in the room but herself and the black ball of terror inside her.

"I can't," she finally whispered. "I can't. Don't ask me. I can't."

"Was it a man or a woman?" Sherlock said, after a gentle pause.

She shook her head, slowly at first, then faster.

"Shh. Sh, Irene. It's all right."

He caught her jaw in his hand and steadied her head. His grip was firm, but not unkind. It threatened to make the tears come again.

"Was this person a man? Nod for yes."

She nodded.

"Did he have a name?"

She shook her head.

"Did you ever meet him?"

She shook her head.

"How did you know of his existence?"

She swallowed.

"They would say sometimes," she said, hoarsely, "if you weren't doing well, that if you didn't improve, they would speak to Sir about you."

"And?"

"And if Sir didn't think you had promise..."

There was a long pause. She had been staring down at the floor for a long time now. She couldn't bear to look at anyone. She should not be doing this.  It was disloyal.

Oh, what, disloyal, said Irene, from somewhere inside her. They sent you to Pakistan and then betrayed you to the Taliban. Fuck loyalty, sweetheart.

"Not all of us made it to the field," was what she finally said.

There was a clatter as John got to his feet, turning his back on them with a muttered curse.

"And you don't know who he is, or was."

"No," she said, looking up at him. "We never saw him. He was always 'sir.'"

"All right then," Sherlock finally said. "You've told us enough. Let's get you dressed and let's go talk to Hilton."

He helped her up off the step. John opened the bathroom door, and watched her balefully as Sherlock guided her into the bedroom. He unlocked the handcuffs. She took her time choosing an outfit, while John roamed in the background, grinding his teeth. Finally, when she was sure that she was as temptingly delicious as the Elsie identity allowed her to be, she turned to Sherlock and said, "I'm ready for my closeup."

"Where's Hilton?" Sherlock replied, with an appreciative smile.

"In the kitchen, probably."

"Take us there, then."

She led them through the house, Sherlock right at her side, John trailing behind them, silent and dark. Down the stairs and into the open, sunlit, steel-shining kitchen, with its warm terracotta tile and its granite countertops and Hilton standing right there by the island, with two uniformed police officers on either side of him. A man in a blazer and tie was sitting in a stool that had been drawn up to the table.

"Ah," he said, as he spotted Sherlock. "Mr. Holmes."

"Superintendent Hargreaves," Sherlock said, calmly. "Here's your man, as it were."

Sherlock put a hand on her shoulder. And not in a friendly way.

Her panicked eyes flew to Hilton's face. His eyes were red. His face looked five years older. And he was doing that thing he did with his jaw.

He knew.

"Adela Giselle," said Hargreaves. "You are under arrest for one count of conspiracy to commit--"

She swung around viciously toward Sherlock. In his eyes she saw no compassion, and no remorse.

"You lying  _bastard!_ " she screamed.

"I sent the email before we arrived," Sherlock explained. "With full instructions. Mr. Cubitt has been very cooperative. A model client, in fact."

"You promised me!" she shouted.

"I  _promised_ you?"

He strode toward her. She backed away from the storm he had become. He roared right into her terrified face.

"You raised a hand against my child!" His face was distorted in rage. "You are  _lucky to be alive!"_

Sherlock spun on his heel. John made a motion toward her. Sherlock grabbed him by the arm, swung him around, and pulled him out of the room. 

His child.

She felt them taking her arms, locking them into handcuffs again, saying whatever it was that the law compelled them to say in this situation. She didn't care. She was someplace far away, deep underground, watching some other little girl come through the sliding doors. Another little soul, about to be submerged in AGRA.

*   *   *   *   *

**AGRA**

**INNER OFFICE RING**

**4:30pm GREENWICH MEAN TIME**

Mary had always disliked being summoned. She tolerated it, at AGRA; one had to. But standing on the thick carpet in Anthea's office, it was hard to bite back her resentment. Anthea's face never varied beyond the very narrow boundaries of what the training manuals called the AGRA Affect. A gentle half-smile, suggestive of some innocent but secretly satisfying knowledge. Mona Lisa, other people might call it. And yet at the same time, every one of her gestures--all approved, all within the protocol--seemed to be letting Mary know how much Anthea despised her, and how greatly she regretted having to interact with her at all.

Behind Anthea's enigmatically smiling face rose the convex wall dividing the Inner Office where Anthea sat from the central space behind it. The wall was made of frosted glass, and the touchscreen built into Anthea's curved desktop could be used to display images on any part of its outer surface. On the wall right now was an enormous image of Rachel, squatting in the corner in her white martial arts tunic, next to a girl of about five named Annie Gertrude. Annie's plump little arms were wrapped around Rachel's shoulders, her little head buried against Rachel's neck. She was sobbing. Rachel's arm was patting Annie's back, and she was saying, "It's all right, Annie. You're just learning. You'll do better next time. You'll be able to kick me down in no time."

"Really?" Annie sobbed, clutching Rachel tighter.

"Of course. Don't cry. Come on. Adra said it's library time next. I can't wait."

Anthea waved a hand at the screen. It froze.

Before Anthea could speak, Mary said, "She's only been here since twelve o'clock this afternoon."

This should not have been a problem. All the reports on Rachel from all of her schools indicated that she had extreme difficulty relating to her peers.

"This is exactly what I was talking about," Anthea said. "I told you, I told you and Sir both. Rachel's too old. Her emotional range is already formed. The habit of attachment is already set. Annie's only four years old and look how fluid she is already."

Certainly Annie was doing a quite credible job of pretending to be a lost and upset child in desperate need of comfort. That was the brilliant stroke, Mary thought. Use a younger child, someone who couldn't possibly pose a threat. It wasn't a fair test of Rachel's temperament.

"If I hadn't given Annie a time limit for this assignment Rachel would still be there trying to cheer her up. Rachel has failed this test, Agnes. She has failed it quite spectacularly."

"It's her first day," Mary said. "Nobody's turfed on the first day."

Anthea shook her head.

"Rachel is not cut out for the work. It astonishes me that you and Sir don't perceive that."

"As long as Sir concurs with me," Mary finally said, "then I fail to see the problem."

"She's talented. I'll give you that. But it's too late to form the emotional habits."

"She's my daughter," Mary replied. "You'll pardon me if I trust my own judgment more than I trust yours."

Anthea stood up, bracing her fingertips on the desk.

"Sir apparently trusts it," said Anthea. "That must be good enough for me."

She walked over to the screen and tapped it. The image folded up and disappeared.

"Regarding the cleanup from your capture," Anthea said, tapping the screen again.

There unfolded, along a lower stretch of the glass wall, an image of a small room containing a hospital bed, an IV stand, a number of monitors, and almost nothing else--apart from a mirror that stretched the length of the opposite wall, in which was reflected the lumpy body and grey head of an unconscious middle-aged woman. A long clear tube snaked from one arm to the IV stand. The woman's face was unhurt, but nearly as pale as death.

"Ariana took the emergency medical module in there today to work on her," Anthea said. "She's stable enough. We're keeping her under, for now."

Mary treated herself to a good long look at Harry Watson's helpless and broken body. She had spent so much of this day imagining that first conversation. What she would say. Where best to insert the knives, how best to twist them.

"But Agnes," said Anthea. "We are not going to waste air and water on her just to give you something to play with. If you believe she has actionable intelligence, then get it. Otherwise, it's action Alpha."

Actionable intelligence. Well, perhaps Harry had some. The phrase was very loosely defined, these days.

"I'll see to it directly," said Mary.

"Do."

They looked at each other for a moment. Then Anthea finally said, "Dismissed."

Mary turned and walked out. Past the sliding doors, along the tunnel with the track lights that turned on one by one as you passed them, along with the currents of compressed air that scoured you and whatever contaminants you might have come in with right out of the inner circle and back to the outer rings. Mary walked back into the girls' area, leaving behind her the ring of the favored daughters, and the blank sinister space at the center occupied only by Sir.

END CHAPTER


	9. MY DINNER WITH MARY

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY SEVEN**

After what they most misleadingly called "library" we had another session in the play spaces and then our two straight lines went right past my mother. She was walking past the entrance to the dorm room we'd been in when I came to. I almost missed her because she'd changed into all black but the Jean Harlow hair stood out. She stopped to watch us go by. Her face wasn't looking sad or angry or anything but somehow I just knew she wasn't feeling good. So I stepped out of line--I had to kind of pry Annie's hand off my arm, she'd become very attached to me--and I said, "I've been looking all over for you."

I thought she would be pleased, and it seemed like she was for about a second, and then she said, "Get back in line, Rachel. It's almost suppertime."

I was about to do it, and then I said, "Aren't you coming?"

She shook her head. "I don't eat in the canteen."

"But I want to eat with you." 

I didn't know I was going to say it before I said it. But there it was. I'd come all this way and done this very rash and dangerous thing just so I could meet her and I'd hardly seen her at all to speak of since we left that little apartment.

"Rules are the students eat together in the canteen."

"But I'm just visiting," I said. "I want to eat with you."

"Rachel, I'm on my way right now to do something very--"

And she said it in That Voice. That Voice, especially when it's saying your name, always means trouble and I felt a very hot flash of something thinking about it.

"You brought me here and you don't even want to be with me!"

"Keep your voice down!" 

She whispered it really fiercely. It's funny though how as soon as an adult tells me to keep my voice down all I want to do is yell.

"Why did you bring me here if you don't want to spend time with me? You're no better than my Dad!"

My mother looked around, and then she punched a button near the door and it opened.

"Get in," she said, as if I were a dog.

I went in, but I might have been growling a little as I passed her.

As soon as the door closed, she said, "Listen to me, Rachel. Everyone in this school has to follow the rules. I'm making an exception for right now because it's your first day; but never again, do you understand?"

She pointed at the sofa near the square table. I stomped over and flopped down onto the sofa.

"First day and only day," I muttered.

"What was that?" my mother said, squatting down on the ottoman opposite the sofa. 

"Nothing," I said.

"It was something," my mother shot back.

I said, "You don't have a proper library here."

My mother sat back slightly on her ottoman.

"We don't have a physical space on site for storing books, if that's what you mean," she said. "But you can download--"

"They showed me about the pad," I said. "You can't get anything but action movies."

"No, you can download books too."

"Books that are just like action movies."

"Look, you can find a library anywhere. This place has things you won't find anywhere else on earth."

She was right about that much. I watched her go over to the tiny little kitchenette and open the fridge.

"You and Annie seemed to be getting friendly," she said, staring at something she'd pulled off a shelf.

"I like Annie but I'm kind of worried about her."

She opened the box of whatever it was and sniffed at it. "How so?"

"Well she was so upset at martial arts. And it seemed like she felt better after I talked to her. But then she was upset all over again after library. I had to hold on to her and calm her down again. And then a bunch of littler kids came over and we had a game of veterinary hospital and that was all right, but--"

The box dropped onto the counter. She turned toward me with her hands on her hips.

"How do you play veterinary hospital?"

"They pretend to be animals with broken wings and hurt paws and so on and you treat them. I mean it's all pretend so you just wave your hands around like you're bandaging whatever it is and then you give the patient a hug and say 'There there, you'll be right as rain in a day or two, my pet,' and you take them off to their kennel to recover, and then you go see the next one."

I couldn't figure out why this seemed so strange to her. But it obviously did because she was really staring at me.

Finally she came back to the ottoman and sat down. She put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands and she smiled and said, "Love, no more playing veterinary hospital, all right?"

"Why?" I said.

"It's not the kind of game we play here," my mother said. 

"Why not?"

"I can't explain. Just--"

She sighed. Then she said, "There isn't much in the fridge. I can make you eggs."

I didn't exactly jump up in the air and yell "I LOVE EGGS!" but I think she got the general idea because she looked happy for a minute.

"Scrambled or..."

"Softboiled is my favorite," I said.

"Mine too!" she smiled back.

While she was filling a pot to boil the eggs, I thought about how Dad always peeled the egg for me and put it in the little egg cup that was actually a shot glass and put salt and pepper on it and then I would lop the top right off and put the strips of toast into the yolk. I thought about how good it always tasted and how the sun came in through that little window and if I lopped extra hard and the top of the egg kind of flew across the table and bounced a bit Dad would laugh because little things like that didn't bother him, he thought it was funny.

I said, "I think what it was is, Annie said something about my settling in, and I told her I would be leaving Sunday night, and she grabbed a hold of my arm and I haven't been able to shake her since. Is she always so clingy?"

My mother lowered the eggs into the pan of water.

"Not always," she said, turning on the burner.

"All the little girls playing vet hospital, too, there was a whole queue of them. Honestly it was as if nobody had ever hugged them before."

We listened to the pot come to a boil.

"I've been thinking maybe I should leave Sunday morning instead," I said. 

The water bubbled. 

"Why?" my mother asked.

"Well it's not going to work out." It kind rushed out, but it felt good once I'd said it. "I mean the Priory School is full of twits but it has a fantastic library. And even at the New Circle School we had a good library. What kind of school doesn't have a library?"

"I told you, Rachel. There is a library, it's just virtual."

"There's no _Charlotte's Web._ What kind of library doesn't have  _Charlotte's Web?_ "

"Well, what kind of school doesn't have a climbing wall?"

I did pause over that for a bit.

The egg timer chimed. My mother took the egg out with a slotted spoon. She put it into an egg-cup. The egg-cup was completely white. I had noticed that everything in this place was very clean and plain. There were no logos on anything and you couldn't tell where anything had come from. The spoon she gave me to crack it with was just a spoon. There was nothing about it that said anything other than 'hello I am a spoon.'

I picked up the spoon. I know how to crack and peel the eggshell myself of course but doing it made me think of my Dad and Lolo and it reminded me that they probably still didn't know where I was.

I said, "Have you heard from Janine?"

My mother was sitting on the other sofa, with her own plate and egg-cup and egg. She hadn't made any toast. I didn't like to ask.

"Yes," my mother said, rapping on the top of her egg with her spoon. "She's explained it all to your aunt."

I had the shell off the top of my egg now. But I didn't feel like eating it right away. The yolk looked too gloopy.

I said, "Is Aunt Harriet  _very_ angry with me?"

My mother reached into a pocket and pulled out a mobile. She tapped the glass a few times and scrolled up, reading the screen. She sighed.

"I'm afraid so, love."

"Let me see."

She looked up. "No, sweetheart."

"Let me see it!" I shouted. 

"No. You shouldn't--Rachel, stop it!"

I grabbed the phone out of her hand and ran to the other side of the room. She'd been looking at the texting screen. It was between her and Aunt Harriet's phone number and Aunt Harriet's texts went like this:

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY CAR YOU BITCH

And then my mother's text said something like I'm not talking about the car I'd think you'd be more concerned about Rachel and then Aunt Harriet's next text said this:

WELL I HAVE HAD IT WITH THAT LITTLE BRAT. YOU WANT HER, YOU CAN HAVE HER. GOOD LUCK AND GOOD RIDDANCE.

"Oh Rachel," my mother's voice said, sadly. "I didn't want you to see that."

My throat seemed to be kind of closing up and my eyes hurt. While I started crying my mother took the phone out of my hand.

"You should have listened to me, Rachel," she said. "Grown-ups say things sometimes...that they don't mean."

But Aunt Harriet did mean it. I was certain of that. What I had done was bad. It was so much worse than anything else I had ever done and those things were bad enough. I had been so stupid. I knew I was on thin ice because my dads tried to send me away in the first place. And then I went and did something a hundred times worse. And now Aunt Harriet didn't want me any more. And my dads wouldn't either.

"Don't do anything rash, love," said my mother, putting the phone away. "Your Aunt Harriet's just angry. She'll calm down. Anyway the  _real_ question is how your dads will take it."

I went from feeling hot all over to feeling cold inside.

"But you said they wouldn't know," I said.

"I know, Rachel," she said, and her forehead got all wrinkly and worried. "But I just didn't think Harry would turn on you this way, and--well, she's already told them."

I heard my own shriek bounce off all the walls.

"YOU SAID!" I shouted.

"I didn't plan on Harry being so--"

"YOU SAID I would be back on Monday and they would never know!"

I was curled up on the couch now and I had forgotten all about my egg and my stomach hurt.

"It's all right, Rachel. They're still in Chicago. They won't be back until the case is over, and that could take weeks. You can stay here until then."

"But what about the Priory School?" I said.

"You're not going back there," she said, decisively. "It wasn't suitable. You weren't happy. You'll stay here until your dads get back from Chicago, and then we'll see."

All my tears had emptied out and I sat up. I felt like I had no insides.

"I want to talk to them," I said.

"Rachel, they're all the way in--"

"I don't care."

"I don't think they want to talk to you, Rachel," my mother said, sadly. "They're very, very angry with you."

In my whole life I had never felt as bad as I felt then. And I have had some bad feelings, believe you me.

"Well I want to talk to them!"

"You can't, Rachel."

"Why not?"

"They're not returning my calls."

The bad feelings in my chest did not go away. But my brain sort of knocked on the glass and said look Rachel I know you're upset but since when has Dad not returned a call about you in the history of ever?

"I DON'T BELIEVE YOU!"

"Rachel!" my mother snapped. Her voice got very sharp and it was getting louder.

"YOU'RE LYING! YOU'RE LYING ABOUT MY DAD AND LOLO AND AUNT HARRIET AND EVERYTHING ELSE!"

"Don't say that, love. Don't say that. Look--come here--"

She slid down the sofa towards me with her arms outstretched and she was in black and she looked like a spider with Jean Harlow's face on it and I got up off the sofa and went to the first door I saw and it opened and I ran in and it closed.

It was a bedroom. My mother's bedroom, I supposed. It was hard to tell because it was as clean and plain as everything else. The bed was made with its white cover. I threw myself on it and started crying.

I heard my mother's voice from the other side of the door. "Rachel."

"GO AWAY!"

"Rachel, I'm sorry you're upset, but this doesn't really change anything--"

"I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU! GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE! I WISH I WERE DEAD!"

For a while all I could hear was my own crying.

"Rachel," she said, and the voice was coming in through an intercom or something because it was loud. "I have a very important meeting. I'm going out. Stay here until I get back."

"DON'T YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

There was no answer.

After a few minutes I went to open the door. I couldn't figure out how to do it.

I had a look around the room. There were a lot of black tops and black pants and black socks and black underwear in the bureau. In the closet there were all sorts of outfits, all different kinds, like a grownup's dress-up trunk. Under the bed I found my little case. I pulled it out and I could hardly get it open I was so impatient to find my tablet and my Elfanant.

My clothes were there. But my tablet wasn't. And neither was Elfanant.

I lay down on the bed. I stared up at the ceiling. I felt as if I had never been in a place this empty.

I hoped my mother would be back soon.

END CHAPTER


	10. THE LADIES LAZARUS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Prior Engagements" is largely stand-alone; but for this one chapter, it helps to have read "Last Dance." 
> 
> If you don't want to go read "Last Dance," all you need to know is that I rebooted Harry's timeline after S3 to make "Law Like Love" canon-compliant; but Harry still remembers the post-S2 timeline. In the post-S2 timeline, Harry and Mary were friends, and Harry was involved in a car crash that killed Mary right before she was supposed to marry John. In "Last Dance," after Eleven reboots her timeline, Harry shows up for the very end of Mary and John's wedding.

**SATURDAY, 5:30pm, GREENWICH MEAN TIME**

It cost Mary quite a lot of effort to walk toward the medical support cells instead of running. If you started running in the corridors you might as well just affix a big blue flashing light to your head that spelled out "I HAVE LOST FLUIDITY" in Morse code. On a mission, of course, people understood that there were things like urgency and adrenaline. But you weren't supposed to care that much about anything that  _wasn't_ a mission. Here at the hub, it was AGRA Affect All The Time.

And then her link started buzzing.

Mary unclipped the thing from her belt and looked at the screen. 

Annabeth. Oh Christ. Why was  _she_ calling in?

"Agnes here," Mary said, putting the link to her ear and resuming her stride.

"Finally!" Annabeth sounded annoyed. "I've been trying to get you--"

"I've been busy." She'd been keeping the link turned off around Rachel. It wouldn't help with the project at all for Rachel to see her giving orders to invisible minions. "And I thought I gave you full instructions."

"You instructed us to intercept target 2. You didn't tell us what to do with her after."

Mary struggled to avoid betraying the frustration she felt.  

"As a matter of protocol all material witnesses to the strike are alphaed," Mary said, wearily. "By identifying target 2 as a material witness I fancied that I was instructing you to alpha her. Evidently I was mistaken."

"Afraid so," said Annabeth, warily.

The AGRA standard was evidently dropping with each new generation. Adela, infuriating as she was, had ten times the intelligence in one of her fingers that someone like Annabeth had in her whole body.

"Where are you now?" Mary sighed.

"We're at strike point. Alice said you wanted us to alpha her but I wanted to hear it direct from you first."

Action Alpha must Always be Authorized. At least Annabeth could keep that much in her head.

"Alice apparently has a better grasp of protocol," Mary replied. "I will note that in my mission report. But yes. Alpha target 2. Immediately."

"Method?"

"Do I have to do  _all_ the thinking on this project?" Mary's voice was rising. She tamped it down. "Make the death fit the life, Annabeth. She's a washed-up pop star. Some sort of overdose would seem to be in order. And don't contact me again until the job is done!"

"Understood," Annabeth said, frostily. "Annabeth out."

Fucking amateurs, Mary thought. It was even more of an agony now, keeping her feet flowing smoothly over the carpet. But she had been waiting for ten years to get Harry Watson into her power. Another ten minutes couldn't make much difference.

*   *    *   *    *

**SATURDAY, 11:30am, CHICAGO STANDARD TIME**

When John closed his eyes it took him right back to the delivery room. Mary--Agnes--had been in labor for something like twenty hours and after the epidural the doctors had counseled them to get some sleep in preparation for the big push. They'd hooked up a monitor to Mary's--Agnes's--belly that picked up the sound of the fetal heartbeat. As he curled up on that horrible sofa and tried to sleep, he could hear Rachel's heart beating, transformed into a low repeated bass note that made the whole room vibrate.

The sound shuddering in the walls of this dark cavern was not a heartbeat. It was the continuous but irregular rumbling of jet engines, communicated from the hull through the heaps of cardboard boxes and the sleeping bags and blankets with which they had lined the tiny open space that they had carved out for themselves in the belly of one of FedEx's many cargo planes. Sherlock's idea of course. You will never get through an American airport with someone else's documents, John, he'd said. And any flight known to be carrying us is in danger of becoming an 'accident.' This is the only ethical and practical solution to our problem. We don the uniforms provided for us by the intrepid and resourceful Ladd, we insinuate ourselves into the cargo hold of a plane bound for London, and we just don't come out.

A fine plan. It worked like a charm. But it was so dark, and so claustrophobic, and so cold. Being cooped up in a barrel and then tossed in a frigid river would be only marginally more uncomfortable.

No heartbeat. Nothing, this time, telling him that Rachel was still alive.

"Sherlock," he murmured.

Unlike John, Sherlock had made no attempt to sleep, and very little attempt to keep himself warm. He was, as best John could estimate, sitting up with his legs crossed, nearly immobile, silent except for the sound of his breathing.

"Can't talk," Sherlock said. "Thinking."

John closed his eyes again. He tried to clear his mind. He failed. It seemed as if every memory he had of Rachel, from her birth upwards, was rattling around in his brain. They were superimposing on each other, bad and good, bright and dark. And the voices in his head that kept telling him about all the things that could happen, about all the things that had already happened, about how many times and in many ways he had failed her, how while he and Sherlock were cavorting in that sodding hotel Rachel was being abducted by a psychopath. He couldn't even imagine what Mary was doing with her. She could have Rachel on a plane to the Ukraine right now, or...no, Rachel didn't have a passport. That had been deliberate. Mary could have her holed up in a room somewhere, boarded up, no windows, chained to the bed so she couldn't escape. And Rachel would fight that and get beaten because she wouldn't know you had to cooperate with your captors and...

"Sherlock," John said.

"Stop it, John," Sherlock warned.

"If I have to be alone with my own brain for seven hours," John said, "I will go mad."

"I must have complete silence."

"I need to talk to you."

Nothing. His stomach churned. His jaw clenched.

"I'm cold," he said.

He heard Sherlock sigh. Then Sherlock's hands slipped under his shoulders and tugged John toward him. 

John curled up into a ball, pillowing his head on one of Sherlock's thighs. Sherlock laid a hand on his head, stroking what was left of his hair. John could imagine him staring out into the darkness. Just as well he didn't have any cigarettes. The smoke would have suffocated them.

"Could you at least think out loud?" John finally said.

"You don't want to hear it," Sherlock muttered.

"If you're afraid it will worry me," John answered, "then let go of that, Sherlock, because I am worrying myself far more effectively than you could ever hope to."

There was a slight shifting of Sherlock's body as he resigned himself.

"If you must know, I am thinking about Anthea."

At least that would make a change from his own thoughts.

"Specifically, I am thinking about the fact that she was working for Mycroft under what I will now call her AGRA name. This suggests that Mycroft was aware of AGRA. That in fact Anthea was his liaison with AGRA. The problem is to determine the nature of the relationship. I don't know if it can be done with the available data. I always assumed that Anthea was his subordinate. But perhaps she wasn't. Perhaps she was his minder."

"Can't imagine Mycroft suffering a minder," John said.

"He wouldn't have been aware of it. He always behaved, at least before me, as if she were his Girl Friday. As he was evidently aware that she was the product of an elite training academy for female spies and assassins, however, one can safely deduce that her duties were more significant than he let on. Mycroft knew more than I knew, obviously. It's possible there were others who knew more than Mycroft knew."

"I thought Mycroft knew everything," John replied.

Sherlock was silent.

"Yes, we're used to that, aren't we, John," Sherlock broke out. "Mycroft knows everything, of course, and we never ask how he knows it or from whom he learns it or to what extent Anthea's connection to AGRA might have increased his store of knowledge."

It was not possible for John to feel any colder. And yet there was a kind of a chilling note in Sherlock's voice.

"He refused to attend your wedding," Sherlock said. 

"I thought that was Mycroft being Mycroft."

John heard a little flittering noise, the sound of Sherlock's curls brushing the air as he shook his head.

"Mycroft knew," Sherlock said. "I think he knew before you were married. I think he knew the moment she answered that advertisement. I think that's why I was recalled to life. At that particular moment."

Behind his closed eyes John saw Mary looking at him, in the candlelight, as the waiter hovered behind him with the bottle of wine. His heart gave a terrifying twist. He opened his eyes. That was no help at all.

"But would he say it?" Sherlock demanded, bitterly. "Sorry, brother mine, time to go home, time to save that poor blockhead of a doctor from the clutches of one of the AGRA girls. What's AGRA, Mycroft? Never you mind, Sherlikins, it's only a secret training camp for spies and assassins who insinuate themselves into the hearts of men and make their nests there while they bide their time and watch for the moment to strike. But who'd want to strike John, Mycroft? Use your brain, Sherlock, it's not your  _soldier_  she's after, is it. Oh, he could have told me the whole story right there in that Serbian prison but that's not Mycroft's way, is it, Sherlock has to learn it all for himself or he'll never grow up."

So hard they had worked on that wedding. Himself, and Mary, and even Sherlock. Everyone said how beautiful it was. Even Harry.

"So proud of myself," Sherlock went on. "Saving the wedding. Stopping the assassination. Mary must have been spitting mad the whole time. The one clear shot she would have had at her target and he never showed. Meanwhile this unutterable thick with a digital camera nearly pulls off  _his_ kill right in front of all our noses."

"Are you trying to tell me," John said, slowly, "that Mary married me purely in order to assassinate Mycroft at my wedding?"

"I believe that was the original plan," Sherlock said. "If not at the wedding, then sometime, somewhere. She was so keen on us staying in touch after, do you remember?"

"I thought it very generous of her," John said, sadly.

"And then she fell pregnant," Sherlock said, letting out a long breath. "How did that even happen?"

"Did Mummy not explain this to you?"

Sherlock made that  _tch_ sound. "Were you not using protection?"

"Yes we were, Sherlock. We were using a cheap and reliable method known as aging."

Sherlock muttered something under his breath.

"Women Mary's age who want to conceive try for months without success. She can't have imagined she was in danger of doing it accidentally."

"It's simply astonishing she should be so careless," Sherlock shot back. "Pregnancy cannot possibly have any part in AGRA's mission protocol."

"Sherlock, you do realize that if she hadn't been 'careless'--"

"--we wouldn't have Rachel and our lives would be unimaginably empty and joyless, John, yes, I know. That Mary's pregnancy is the most important thing that ever happened to either of us I do not question. My point is that the question of whether the pregnancy was, from Mary's point of view, intentional or accidental may be germane to the investigation."

"Anyway why couldn't having a baby be part of mission protocol?" John said, roused to contradiction by Sherlock's dismissive tone. "It's certainly going to gain the man's trust."

"No," came Sherlock's voice from the darkness.

"No?"

"No."

"Why not?"

There was a silence that seemed to John to be filling up with something that might be slightly toxic.

"Because after the kill is completed, the agent has to disappear," Sherlock said. "They've invested so much in these girls, they're not disposable. They have to melt away without a trace and then return as someone new. Having a baby would prevent that."

John said, though he was nearly sure he would regret it immediately, "Why?"

"Because a child who has lost its mother will never stop looking for her."

John moved as far away from Sherlock as the boxes around them would let him.

"Rachel never asks about Mary."

"John, your father left you when you were eleven. You have never referred to him even once since the day I met you. And you think about him every day."

John wondered how Sherlock had deduced this. Although it could just be that he had been talking to Harry.

"Every day," Sherlock repeated.

"All right, Sherlock, what's your point?"

"The fact that Rachel doesn't ask about her mother doesn't mean she's not thinking about her."

"Do NOT make this MY FAULT!"

He was afraid his voice would get loud enough to make the boxes fall in on them. They'd arrive crushed together in this cardboard cocoon, bodies fused together, spirits as far apart as they had ever been.

"I blame myself," Sherlock said.

John snorted.

"I shouldn't have respected your wishes."

"Shut up, Sherlock!"

"Mary's story belongs to Rachel too. It is not your private property."

"DAMN it, Sherlock, if you don't  _stop_ this I swear to God I will punch you in the face."

"And you wonder why Rachel doesn't ask."

John punched the nearest cardboard box. His fist went right through it, into the styrofoam peanuts.

"Let's save it for when we need it, shall we?" Sherlock said, unperturbed.

"Sherlock," John began, as his chest tightened, "I do  _not_ understand how you can sit there  _thinking_  as if this just another one of your cases. This is Rachel. Our Rachel. She's all alone with that  _woman_ and God alone knows what she's already done to her or is doing to her. Or what if it wasn't even Mary, Sherlock? What if she was abducted by some other...AGRA girl...and she's already been--"

"Stop it, John," Sherlock warned. 

"Aren't you  _upset?_ Don't you even  _care?_ "

John slammed backward into the boxes behind him. He realized after a moment that this was because Sherlock had pushed him. Sherlock's face, from the feel of his breath and the sound of his voice, was very close to his own.

"I do  _not_ deserve that," Sherlock growled.

No. He really didn't. But John couldn't bring himself to say that.

"Do I care? Who do you think I am?"

Now that Sherlock's voice was hurt as well as angry John could answer it.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was--thinking about--"

"Feeling will not help us find her. If I for one moment allow myself to consider the possibility that Rachel is not still alive I will relapse into the pile of ineffectual weeping rubbish that has been my standard morphology since Mycroft's death and then where will Rachel be, John? Where will  _you_  be?" _  
_

John felt Sherlock's hands claw at his shoulders. Instinctively he brought up his arms to block. He knocked Sherlock's hands away. Their absence immediately began to seem unbearable. John threw himself forward blindly, bumping up against Sherlock's chest, wrapping his arms around Sherlock's shoulders, finding with his head the curve between Sherlock's neck and shoulder. Great shuddering breaths burst out of John's lungs but there weren't any tears. Just this shuddering for cold and gasping for air. 

"I'm sorry," he managed to force out. "This is my fault. It's my fault. I should have warned Rachel about Mary. I left her vulnerable."

There was a strange, warped, low-voiced groan from Sherlock that might have meant that he was about to cry. But nothing came after it.

"It's not your fault," Sherlock said. "You're doing the best you can. But so am I. You understand?"

John nodded.

"I'm not good at it," Sherlock said. "It's not my area. But I've tried. I've always tried. I'm trying now. I'm--"

"Sssh."

John tightened his arms around Sherlock's shoulders. 

"You're a good father, Sherlock," John murmured into his ear. "It will be all right. We'll face this just like we've faced everything else. You do what you can do and I'll do what I can do and together we'll find her."

"Of course we'll find her, John." Sherlock almost had his habitual tone back, though he was still hanging onto John for dear life. "I've never doubted that."

John breathed in Sherlock's smell. It quieted his mind enough to allow another question to bubble up.

"Sherlock," he said, and his voice sounded very small. "Is it possible that Harry's still alive?"

"It's not  _im_ possible," Sherlock said, after a pause.

John took a deep breath.

"Balance of probability," he said, in what he hoped were more stoic tones.

Sherlock's arms tightened around him. 

"What do  _you_  think?" Sherlock finally said.

The poor man. He didn't want to say it. But he had promised, all that time ago in the belly of another flying vehicle, that there would be no more tricks. And now, John thought sadly, he can't lie to me, even though he wants to.

"I think that in order to get Rachel away from Harry you'd have to kill her," John said.

"I think you are correct," Sherlock said.

John waited for the rest of his body to get the news. It happened soon enough.

Sherlock held onto him while John's shoulders started shaking. He could have blamed it on the cold. But why bother? What did it matter? His father wasn't there to see him cry, and neither was Harry. She would never be there with him or for him, ever again. Just as he had not been there with her or for her when...when. When he became the last living member of his family. The last Watson standing, with the hopeful exception of Rachel.

*   *   *   *   *

**5:40 GREENWICH MEAN TIME**

**SOMEWHERE IN SUSSEX**

"What'd you find?" said the older woman's voice.

"Half a bottle of chardonnay and a half-dozen expired sleeping tablets," said the younger.

Janine lay on top of the bedspread where she'd been dumped. The best thing that she, in her foggy state, could to do was pretend she was still out cold. Her surreptitious experiments with moving about while they weren't paying attention to her had not been encouraging. Whatever they'd injected her with, there was enough left in her system to stop her from fighting back, at least in any effective way. 

She tried to remember if she had ever actually reached anyone. She thought she might remember getting a voice message, before these two goons burst into the Williams' farmhouse kitchen, pretending to be paramedics looking for an escaped mental patient.

"Not exactly a sure bet," said the older woman.

"Well, couldn't we supplement from the pharmakon?"

"She was famous once. There might be an autopsy. Don't want anything weird showing up on the tox screen. Not that anyone would know to look for it, you know, but if word got back they found paraticol or something in her blood Agnes would have our skins."

"But there's prevenarin in her now."

"Prevenarin breaks down into sugar in the bloodstream. It becomes undetectable. She's metabolized enough of it now, they'll never notice it."

"That's you, Alice. Always thinking ahead."

"You should learn how, Annabeth," said the older woman. "Thinking ahead is how you stay alive. That's how Agnes did it."

"For all the fun she gets out of  it," snapped Alice. "What is her  _problem?_ "

"Living in the past," said the older woman's voice. "Selkirk's in, the police have always been hopeless, and the Holmes brothers are out of business, so why bother, really? Make the kill as messy as you like, no one will ever solve it."

"So what do we do?"

 Janine resisted the urge to open her eyes. 

"Bathtub," said Alice. "We get the stuff into her and then put her in the tub. It'll look like she just passed out, slipped underwater, and drowned."

"That doesn't sound like a sure bet either," said the younger one. "What if she doesn't slip under?"

There was a slapping sound, as if maybe one had struck the other.

"You drown her yourself, thicko," said the older woman. "Then they come along and see her dead in the bath with the empty pill and wine bottles beside her and they jump to conclusions. Good God, Annabeth, I don't know where they found you. I'll run the bath, you get her clothes off."

Oh Jesus. 

Janine forced her eyes open. They wouldn't stay. The lids kept drooping, no matter how she tried. She couldn't get her lips and tongue moving either. It was almost as if she were already dead.

If Janine had been capable of real movement, feeling Annabeth's hands on her would have inspired it. But she wasn't. She managed to drag one hand a few inches along the bedspread, but Annabeth was throwing Janine around so roughly that she didn't even notice it. The clumsy and indifferent hands dragged her out of the clothes she had chosen with such care that morning. Maybe Harry had made it to the school. Maybe Rachel would be all right, even if Janine wouldn't.

"Tell you something, Annabeth," said the older woman, after Janine's body had been released back to the bedspread. "You're not exactly keen, but you are quick. Get the tube."

"The tube?"

"Jesus, Annabeth. Inside the pharmakon there's a little black bag that has a flexible tube coiled up inside it. Bring it over."

"What's the tube for?"

"To get all that junk down her throat and into her stomach. Hurry up."

Janine tried to sit up. All she managed a twitch and a moan.

"I think she's coming around, Alice," said the younger woman.

"Yeah, not soon enough to matter," said the older one. "Hold up her shoulders, tilt her head back, and watch how I put the tube in because you'll be doing it yourself next time."

Fear having been long ago exhausted, what Janine mainly felt as the Annabeth one shifted her into position was anger. At her own body, for its stupid failure to resist. At these two goons who were going to kill her with less fuss and bother than they would drown a kitten. At whoever had started all this by sending those photos.

"What is all this about, anyway?" said Annabeth, as Alice's hands tilted Janine's head back and opened her mouth. "What's Agnes up to? She can't have done it for the sake of the car."

"Word from the hub is it's about her daughter."

Annabeth gasped. "Agnes has a  _daughter?"_   

"That's what Aminta says. New girl turns up, nine years old or thereabouts, everyone's instructed to pretend she's just visiting. Like a prospective student or something. Referred to Agnes if they have any questions."

"How can she have a daughter?"

"Got herself up the pole on her last field mission," Alice said, dropping her voice confidentially. "And it was going to be her LAST last, if you take my meaning."

"You mean she got stripped."

"Oh, yeah, but even before that, it was going to be the last. She made that Mary Morstan character last for ages. She must have known she wasn't ever getting another."

Slowly, the words began swimming around in the fog of Janine's mind, moving toward each other.

"Now," said Alice. "You can put the tube in either up the nose and over the soft palate or straight down the throat. I go down the throat, it's less nasty. You depress the tongue and then take the tube and--AAAAGH!!!"

Alice let out an oath. Janine still couldn't get her eyes to stay open but she didn't need the confirmation. She had succeeded in sinking her teeth as hard as she could into Alice's hand. If only her jaw would stay locked. 

"Get her off me!"

Annabeth was laughing. Janine could feel the arms holding her shaking.

"You stupid bitch, this is NOT FUNNY. Get the prevenarin."

Janine felt a hand pressing on  both angles of her jaw. Her mouth popped open. Her head and shoulders hit the bed as Alice threw her down. 

"We're out," came Annabeth's voice. 

"How can we be OUT?"

"We've been keeping her under all afternoon, all right? This shit is supposed to be for temporary incapacitation."

"Fuck. All right, into the tub. You take her legs."

Janine found herself able to move now, though only feebly. Still. It gave Annabeth some trouble. She got her eyes open for a moment--long enough to see a pair of black-covered arms struggling to keep a hold of her bare legs, and long enough to aim a kick at Annabeth's moon-round and malicious little face. Annabeth let out a roar even louder than Alice's. 

"SHUT UP!" hissed Alice. "LISTEN!"

Janine couldn't hear whatever it was.

"It can't be coming here," said Annabeth, doubtfully.

"It fucking is," Alice said. "Shut up and get her in!"

There was a moment of falling. And then Janine's body hit the water. 

The shock of it actually forced her eyes open. Through the rippling water she could see very little. But she could feel the arms holding her down. She knew she would never break the grip. But she also knew that for some reason, they were in a terrible hurry.

Janine opened her mouth and let a few air bubbles come out. She held her breath.

The water buckled and sloshed above her. She heard voices, muffled and distorted. She lay still.

The arms disappeared. The water began to calm. There was nobody leaning over her.

Janine forced herself to count to ten.

She flung an arm out. Her wrist banged against the edge of the tub. She managed to grip it. She hauled herself up, slowly, slowly, forcing the muscles second by second to keep tightening, to keep dragging her up.

Gasping, she flopped over the edge of the tub. Her legs still sat in the water. She braced her hands on the floor and tried to drag herself forward. It was so very slow. And now there were footsteps.

They were coming back. It wasn't fair.

Janine looked up at the shadow that had fallen across the doorway. It was long, and tall, and spiky at the top. Also, she thought, not shaped very much like a woman. 

"God almighty," said the shadow. The voice was somehow familiar, though she couldn't place it. "Janine?"

She tried to make her eyes focus on his face.

"Molly!" He'd turned away from her before she could do it, shouting into the bedroom behind him. "Molly! Upstairs! Master bath! NOW!"

The rest of her was somehow sliding out of the tub, but it wasn't because of anything she was doing. Also there were a great many towels wrapping themselves round her. She fought against them until she felt a slender hand on her forehead, stroking her wet hair out of it. She made her eyes stay open long enough to recognize the large forehead, the big brown eyes, the frown of concern with the little quivers at the corner.

"You'll be all right, Janine," said Molly. "We'll get you to hospital. You'll be all right. Listen to my voice, Janine, try to stay conscious."

It was all she could do to nod.

The man hoisted her into his arms. Up close she could just about make out the lines in his face and the silvered tufts of hair overshadowing his forehead.

As he began carrying her down the stairs, she started trying to make words. It was not successful.

"Just keep calm, Janine," said Lestrade's voice. "You'll tell us whatever it is when you're feeling more yourself."

It wasn't until they were settling her in the back seat of a Cortina that Janine said a single intelligible thing.

"Rachel," she said.

"Everyone buckled?" Lestrade called back as he put the car in gear.

"Rachel..."

"Yes, what about her?" said Molly, encouragingly.

"Visiting," Janine said. "Visitor. Visit...hub. Rachel...visitor...hub."

"Any idea what that means, Molly?" Lestrade called back, as the car left the driveway.

"Well I think--I hope--it means--she's alive?" 

Molly bent her anxious eyes on Janine's face, looking for confirmation. Janine nodded.

Tears sprang out of Molly's eyes.

"Oh thank God," she said, bringing her hands up to cover her face. "Thank God. Oh my God. Greg--no! Don't text and drive! I'll do it."

"Sherlock," Janine managed.

"He knows," Molly said, quickly. "He got your message. He knows. He contacted us. It'll be all right." Molly tried for a smile. "They'll be so glad to know she's alive. That you're alive, I mean."

Janine closed her eyes in relief.

"Don't," Molly said. "Stay with us, Janine, it's important."

Janine tried to make another word.

"Harry?" she said. 

The corners of Molly's mouth quivered again.

"Sally's out looking for her," Molly said. 

Sally Donovan. Who was now head of Homicide.

Janine still couldn't really speak. But apparently she could cry.

*   *   *   *   *

**SATURDAY, 5:45PM, GREENWHICH MEAN TIME**

“Don’t tap the glass,” said Ada.

Mary smiled. It was a running joke at AGRA. There were a lot of one-way mirrors, and looking through them at the unsuspecting people on the other side, one was irresistibly reminded of those glass-fronted cubbies in the reptile house at the zoo. Mary could remember, actually, her first visit to the zoo, back when she was Lizaveta, and the unpleasant shock of recognition she felt as she peered through the glass of one cage at a chameleon on the other side.

Ada was sitting on a stool drawn up to the counter that ran along the bottom edge of the one-way mirror that looked into the medical support cell in which Harry Watson was sleeping, like the world’s least beautiful princess.

“I followed your instructions,” Ada said, nodding at the handheld lying on the counter. “She’ll be coming out of sedation soon. There’s no visible cranial trauma—she was wearing a helmet—but we don’t have a CAT scanner in here and there’s no reliable way to know whether her brain has been injured until she regains consciousness. Or until she doesn’t regain consciousness.”

Ada was only twenty-one, and still retained traces of a sense of humor.

The sheet fluttered as one of Harry’s arms twitched.

“There,” said Ada. “I’d go in now. It won’t be long.”

Mary exited the observation alcove, wondering what Ada was making of the situation. It was so easy to go paranoid here. Everyone was always watching everyone else. Mary didn’t expect she’d really need Ada’s help, but it was better to enlist someone. It stopped the people above you from thinking you had something to hide.

With the door of the MSC closed and locked behind her, Mary pulled up a stool. Harry’s eyes were still closed, but eye movement was beginning to flutter the lids. They’d splinted Harry’s broken wrist, mainly to give the students the practice. The splint was streamlined, designed, far more shapely and well-made than Harry’s own hand and arm. As an orphan she’d never have made it. Without beauty, without charm, without even cuteness. Even, Mary imagined, as a toddler. Nobody would have taken her in. Not for love nor money.

The impulse toward physical harm—the desire to just pull over a tray full of medical tools and begin slicing and stabbing Harry’s grey inert flesh—was growing, but it was not unmanageable. With the mark, of course, it was different. But with a target, they had taught her, the first touch is the beginning of the kill. They had also taught her that no hands-on kill should take more than sixty seconds from start to finish. She had always striven to meet this standard, which some AGRA graduates thought was unrealistic. Her record was nearly perfect. It was one of the things that had brought her to Sir’s attention.

This was going to take a lot longer than sixty seconds. It would take as long as Mary could make it take, and it would be far more painful than any mere physical torture. A child, Mary had discovered over the past ten years, is a perfect engine for the infliction of anguish. Harry, before she died, would discover it too.

Her eye caught a flicker of motion. Harry’s head turned to one side. Her eyes opened, slowly. The pupils were contracted. She was still not entirely out of it.

Mary repositioned her stool, and looked grimly into Harry’s awakening face.

Harry’s eyes blinked. Her mouth began widening, slowly, into a smile.

The smile was extremely unsettling. Mary reminded herself that Harry was coming out of sedation. She probably didn't know yet what she was looking at. Mary took a breath and settled herself, waiting with sharpened longing for that first delicious moment of horrified recognition.

Harry’s lips parted. She took in a soft breath. As unappetizing as Harry’s lined face was, that breath transformed it. It looked younger. Brighter. Beatific almost. It looked…Mary realized she was searching for the word “ecstatic.”

“Mary,” Harry sighed. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “You’re alive.”

Mary leaned over, studying Harry's face for some clue about what in hell was happening.

Harry lifted both arms and flung them around Mary’s shoulders. Mary found herself locked into an embrace, her head pressed against Harry’s sternum, one ear against the triangle of bare skin left open by Harry’s gray-green hospital gown. Harry’s heart was beating rapidly. Harry’s arms, and then her whole ribcage, began shaking. She was sobbing.

“Thank God,” Harry’s voice whispered. “Oh thank God. Oh Mary. You’re all right.”

It was a core element of the AGRA training: incorporate the unexpected. When the script breaks down, improvise. Play along. Assess the new situation before you attempt to change it.

“You're all right.”

Harry whispered it, almost, stroking Mary’s hair with her good hand. For the sake of playing along, Mary willed her body to relax. She put aside all her memories and yielded to the embrace. She listened to Harry’s heartbeat, slowing down. She let herself feel the warmth of Harry’s body and the arms enfolding her. Mary felt her own pulse evening out, as her cheek rose and fell with the rhythm of Harry’s breathing. She thought, idly, that she hoped none of the girls would be turfed over the game of veterinary hospital. At that age, once you knew what it was like to be held, of course you wouldn't give it up easily.

The rhythm changed.

Harry’s arms let go of her. Her body tensed. Mary sat up, watching Harry’s face. That transfiguring happiness was gone, and the pupils had begun to dilate again. But Harry’s face still looked nothing like what Mary had expected. There was, she thought, a great deal of embarrassment. But no revulsion, and no fear.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Harry said, in a voice much closer to her usual register. “I got confused. Must be the..." She cleared her throat and gave her head a little shake. "You must think…Before I came to I was having a…dream, or something. You were in it and it was horrible. I was so relieved when I...But of course it never happened. It never—“

Harry gestured with the splinted arm. She winced. She looked at her broken wrist with an expression of utter bafflement.

“But I didn’t…” she said, half-aloud, to herself. “I didn’t drive. I deliberately did not drive. So how…so how…”

Mary drew back as Harry sat up, pushing with her good arm. She stared at her legs, still shrouded in the hospital-issue sheet. She stared at the splint on her wrist. She stared at the saline drip and the IV stand. A flash of movement reflected in the mirror caught her eyes.

Harry sat bolt upright. Her gaze was riveted on her own reflection. Her face froze in a mask of terror. Sweat burst out on her forehead. She lifted a trembling hand to touch her short gray hair.

“What is it, Harry?” Mary said, gently.

Harry’s eyes remained fixed on the mirror.

“Are you all right, Harry?” Mary inquired.

“Mary…I’m sorry…I’m…I’m going to have to ask you…”

The beginning of a theory was stirring in the back of Mary’s mind.

“Yes, Harry?” she said, looking into the mirror with a comforting smile.

“What’s today’s date?”

Mary told her.

Harry’s hands dropped into her lap. Her chin began to quiver. Tears spilled out of her eyes. Her jaw clenched and so did her good hand, but the tears kept coming. Her chest heaved. She was trying to regulate her breathing. She was trying to choke back sobs. It was only half working, and it was the most pathetic thing Mary thought she had ever seen.

Mary put a hand on Harry’s arm. Harry blinked, as the tears fell even faster.

“Mary, what’s happened to me?”

Mary said, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Harry tried to take herself in hand, and search her recollection.

“I think…” She shook her head, still keeping her eyes on the mirror. “I was...I was walking down the drive...I was leaving your wedding.”

Harry turned her horrified and pleading eyes on Mary. Mary looked back at her, letting tears of pity come to her eyes.

“Oh Harry,” Mary said, as if in shock. “That was a very long time ago.”

“Obviously!”

Harry turned viciously away from the mirror. The motion shifted her broken wrist and she shrieked in agony.  

"Careful," Mary said. "Oh--careful--your wrist--here, let me."

As Mary, trying to take some comfort in how seamlessly she had rejoined her pre-wedding persona, carefully settled Harry's broken wrist, she said, "Do you really not remember  _anything_ after that?"

Harry lay back down, flat on the table, staring up at the ceiling. Her tears were flowing freely now. Her face was a disaster area. She shook her head. It was almost painful to see how lost she was. Even when Harry had been pretending to drink, on those supposedly clandestine lunches together, she'd always retained some of that lawyer's sharpness. But she was drifting in the fog now, entirely at sea.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, plaintively. "I can't. Something's happened to my brain."

Harry struggled to stop the tears. Mary putt a gentle hand on Harry’s good arm, and let a few of her own tears slip out. "I'm so sorry, Harry."

"Where's the doctor?" Harry said. Her whole chin was quivering and she could barely speak. "I need to see the doctor. I need to find out what's happened to me."

Mary patted her arm. "I'll get her for you, Harry."

She slipped out of the room. She barged into the observation area, where Ada was still perched on her stool, leaning forward, with her nose almost against the glass. When Ada turned around, she looked like one of the little ones watching her first action film.

"What in hell is going on with her?" Mary demanded. 

"Retrograde amnesia!" Ada was nearly squealing with delight.

"I thought that only happened in soap operas."

Ada waved that away. "Getting hit on the head with an oar or something and waking up saying 'Who am I,' yeah, all that's shite. But traumatic brain injury almost always involves some retrograde amnesia. Victim has no memory of the accident or of the hour or day or week before. Ten years is a bit strong but it's been known to happen."

Now Mary felt like crying for real. Not with compassion, but with overwhelming and bitter disappointment.

For years she had dreamed of this moment. With careful planning and a bit of luck here and there, she had at last created the perfect conditions in which to extract the precise, exquisite, and appropriate revenge she had been planning against the bitch who stole her child from her. And now thanks to one stupid variable, one piece of the unexpected which happened to be unavoidably beyond her control, it was ruined. Harry’s head had been hit just a shade too hard. She had lost her memories of the previous ten years. She did not know what she was being punished for. She didn't even know enough to be afraid of Mary.

"Isn't it amazing?" Ada chirped. "Ten whole years you have to play with. And she still trusts you. You could tell her anything! ANYTHING!"

A bit of the unfeigned exuberance with which Ada was bursting entered Mary's heart. And everything began to change.

When a plan blew up you didn't cry over it; you made a new one. Harry as a source of pleasure and satisfaction was gone; but Harry as a tool was there to be used. And, Mary realized, Harry was exactly the tool that she needed at this moment. Mary had always known that negotiating the transition from visitor to resident would be the trickiest part of this plan. She had thought that Rachel was more alienated from John and Sherlock than she evidently was. She had accepted Harry's abandonment of her. But the first attempt to decisively alienate her from the boys had backfired.

She checked her link. Finally. Abigail had posted the kill report at the designated link at 10:53AM Chicago time. 

John and Sherlock were dead. She was Rachel's only biological parent.

As she savored this information, she felt a surge of some buoyant, expansive emotion that Mary was afraid might get out of her control. The plan taking shape in her mind right now was the most beautiful idea her mind had ever entertained. It glowed in her mind with golden perfection, a sphere of amber glass veined with leaden tendrils that just kept on unfurling, tracing ever more complex curves across the shining surface. 

If she went to Rachel and told her that both her fathers had died, Rachel wouldn't believe her. Mary had tried out a far less audacious lie not half an hour earlier and been met with screaming denials. But she would believe it coming from Harry. And once Mary explained to her why it was necessary, Harry would break the bad news to Rachel. Because Mary knew more about Harry now than Harry did herself, and she could make Harry do anything.

Ada was still staring at her, hands clasped in front of her, silently pleading to be allowed to take part in the fun.

"All right, Ada," Mary said. "She's been asking for a doctor. Put on the lab coat and go in there and tell her you're her doctor. Tell her what you just told me. Tell her she was in a very bad car accident but that Rachel is all right. If she asks you a question you don't know how to answer just tell her you're running more tests and you'll know more tomorrow."

"Oh Agnes," Ada said, as her hands fluttered into the air. "You're the  _best._ " 

Mary watched her go with satisfaction. Some of the AGRA girls, at least, had a proper enthusiasm for the work and a just appreciation of skill. Rachel would be like Ada, Mary thought. Not stupid like Annabeth or hard like Anthea. She'd be good at the work. She'd enjoy it. It would make her happy.

Mary sat on the stool, watching Harry sit up, staring in her fogged way at Ada's face, frowning and nodding, concentrating hard.

"...always have some retrograde amnesia," Ada was explaining, and very professionally too. "You were buckled up, and the airbag deployed, so your internal organs are still in good shape. Also, I want you to know," she said, dropping her voice into a low and soothing register and laying a hand on Harry's forearm, "that Rachel is perfectly all right."

Harry stared at Ada blankly for a moment. Then she got that look of pained chagrin that Mary was starting to recognize like the face of an old friend.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, with that little apprehensive shake of the head. "But...who's Rachel?"

Oh my God. It was true.

"I'll let Mary tell you about all that," said Ada, giving her one final pat. "You just rest now."

The observation booth was soundproofed, of course. So Harry couldn't hear Mary laughing. 

"Doctor Black?" said Harry, as Ada was on her way out the door. 

"Yes, Ms. Watson?" said Ada, turning back for a moment.

"Why can't I feel my legs?"

Ada's expression altered beautifully. It really was a pleasure to see the real old-school talent in someone as young as she was. 

"We're not sure yet," said Ada. "We're still running a few more tests. We'll know more tomorrow."

"Doctor," Harry called out, with an edge of panic. But the door closed.

Mary watched Harry sit there, staring at the door. One large tear welled up from each of Harry's eyes. Other than that, her face was immobile, setting itself like stone.

The door to the observation alcove closed. Ada lay back against it, fanning herself with one hand. 

"Oh my God," she breathed. "Oh my God, that was SO AWESOME!"

Mary smiled. "I'm glad you're enjoying it," she said. Even if Ada couldn't possibly enjoy it half as much as Mary would.

"Thank you so much for giving me a piece of this," Ada said. "I won't forget it. What are you going to do now?"

This because Mary was already at the door.

"I'm going to tell her who Rachel is," Mary said.

END CHAPTER


	11. I SHOT A TEXT INTO THE AIR

At 6:30pm Greenwich Mean Time, the following text was sent from a mobile phone traveling down a country road in Sussex toward the nearest hospital:

WE FOUND JANINE. SHE IS NOT VERY LUCID BECAUSE SOMEONE BROKE INTO HER HOUSE AND TRIED TO DROWN HER IN HER BATHTUB. WHILE THEY WERE DOING THAT THEY APPARENTLY SAID THAT RACHEL IS VISITING THE HUB. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS EXACTLY BUT JANINE SEEMS SURE THAT RACHEL IS ALIVE. WILL CONTACT YOU WHEN WE KNOW MORE. MH

At 6:31 Greenwich Mean Time, in the middle of the hold of a FedEx cargo plane passing over Greenland, two grown men burst into tears and spent the next four minutes clinging to each other while sobbing uncontrollably.

At 6:32 Greenwich Mean Time, at 221b Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and reached down a bottle from the cupboard above the cabinet, from which she poured a large helping of whisky into a teacup.

At 6:35 Greenwich Mean Time, Lady Elizabeth Smallwood was startled by the discreet buzzing of a burner phone which she routinely wore taped to one inner thigh under her skirt. At the first possible opportunity, she concluded the meeting of the Magna Carta Committee, which had already run long and deteriorated into an aimless round of bitching about Selkirk and his lackeys. She walked back to her office, where she packed up her things as fast as she could do it without appearing to be unusually hasty.

At 6:47 Greenwich Mean Time, Lady Elizabeth Smallwood, having parked her car on the very lowest floor of a gigantic parking garage, reached under her skirt and pulled out the burner phone. She flipped it open. On the screen was a photograph of a handsome Irish setter with a dark red coat and mournful eyes, bearing the caption, ADOPT ME TODAY!

At 6:51, Assistant Commissioner for Homicide Sally Donovan, sitting alone at the desk usually occupied by the headmaster of the Priory School, looked up from her mobile to see the doors of the headmaster's office finally swing open to admit Portia Smyth-Chudleigh, Portia's father, and two of Portia's father's lawyers. Donovan stood up as they entered. 

"My client protests--" began the lawyer on the left.

"Sit down," said Assistant Commissioner Donovan. "And shut up."

END CHAPTER


	12. BORN AGAIN

**SATURDAY, 6:10PM**

******AGRA**

Mary could not help being unsettled by the way Harry's face lit up when she walked into the medical support cell. It reminded her uncannily of the way John used to greet her, before they started 'dating,' when she came to work every morning. Half rising out of his chair, halfway through saying some utterly mundane thing about the day's schedule, and yet beaming with some inner light that only Mary had the power to switch on. In Harry's case the illumination was less transforming. She seemed less confused, which was only natural; the last of the sedation would be worn off by now. But she still looked like hell.

"Mary," Harry said, as Mary approached the examination table. "Tell me. The accident. Did I kill anyone?"

The sad thing was that the infinite possibilities, all the wonderful choices Mary could make about Harry's last ten years, would diminish with every question Mary answered and every factitious bit of information she introduced. So tempting to tell her: actually, you plowed into the side of a tour bus and took out four children and their elderly grandmother. But that would create complications down the line. Keep the number of demonstrable lies to a minimum. A good rule of thumb. Mission first, Agnes. Vengeance later.

Mary nodded. "No fear, Harry. It was you versus a lorry, and you naturally lost."

Harry closed her eyes and brought one hand up to rub the eyelids wearily.

"Was I drunk?" she said.

Feeling the pause, Harry dropped her hand, sighed, and lifted her eyes. You had almost to admire it, the way she stared right into the abyss, and never gave you even a flinch of satisfaction.

"Oh, no," said Mary, as if eager to offer whatever cheer she had to give. "No. You were...you were very upset. That's all."

Harry's fingers tapped in rhythm on one knee. She kept her level, hard, and yet still very frightened stare on Mary.

"Upset about...?"

Mary looked away. "Not today, Harry. Rest. I'll tell you tomorrow."

"Who's Rachel, Mary?"

A hint of suspicion, as if she detected some conspiracy to keep something important from her. She had, of course, no earthly idea of how right she was. 

Mary performed pained embarrassment. Judging by Harry's increasingly consternated expression, she did it well.

"Oh no," Harry said, with sudden panic. "Is she--my--partner?"

Mary almost laughed. But she turned it into concern, and said, "No, Harry. Look...here's Rachel."

Mary held out Harry's phone, with a photo of Rachel pulled up on the screen. It had been taken on her first day at the Priory School, and it conveyed nothing of her actual personality. Most of Rachel's photographs didn't. Mary still hoped that she had not learned this too late.

Harry let out a sob. Tears followed. And in an unsteady whisper, with her eyes still glued to the photo, she asked, "And...she's mine?"

Interesting window into Harry's world. One might almost feel pity were it not for the possessive rage that engulfed one at this moment.

"No, love," said Mary, working hard to make it come out gently. "She's mine. Well, mine and John's."

Harry nodded, snuffling up the tears and handing back the phone. "Yes. Of course. That makes more sense."

Mary set the phone down on the table, looking at it in a pained and awkward way. 

"Well," Harry said, in an attempt to lighten the silence that had fallen. "I hesitate to ask, but am I actually...with...anyone?"

Mary had not though to predetermine an answer to this question. As she considered the options, an impulse possessed her. For a moment she was fully determined to yield to it. To say,  _actually...you're with me._ And see what happened.

But even as she opened her mouth, her mind was running through the moves ahead; and no. Too many possible complications, too many things that would be hard to explain, and above all too unrelated to the primary goal. No distractions. This is high stakes here. Focus.

"No," Mary said, with a bright smile. "Still single. Always have been, since I've known you."

Harry's sigh warmed a tiny corner of Mary's heart.

"Ah well," she said at last. "All for the best, I suppose."

She blinked at Mary for a moment. Then she said, "What was your daughter doing in my car?"

"Your car?"

"The doctor seemed concerned to let me know she was unharmed. I assume that meant she was in the car."

"Well," Mary said, slowly and reluctantly, "yes, she was, Harry. But she wasn't hurt."

"So why--"

"You were collecting her from school. You do that fairly often, when John and Sherlock are on a case, or...well..."

Mary trailed off, uncomfortably, looking down at the floor and biting her lip. Harry, apparently too busy establishing basic backstory for herself to pick up on unspoken hints, said, tentatively, "So...we're speaking? John and I?"

Mary hated to give up any piece of information that would make Harry happy. But it was necessary for the plan.

"Speaking?" she repeated, as if confused. "Oh! Oh, yes, Harry, you're quite close now. I'm sorry, I keep forgetting you will have forgotten. You stopped drinking...oh...it must be five years ago now."

Harry's face broke into a real smile.

"Five years?"

Mary shrugged. "Thereabouts."

"My goodness," she said, putting her good hand on top of her bad one as if giving herself a congratulatory pat. "Well done me." Her brow furrowed a moment. "Have they moved to the suburbs?"

Mary stared, unable for the moment to make sense of the question.

"Or...am I not in Norwood any more?"

Idiot, Mary said to herself. Your memory used to be better than this. "No, you moved to London a few years ago. Rachel's quite fond of you, you know," Mary said, digging her nails into the palms of her clenched hands. They were short nails and it was not much satisfaction but she had to do something to force that sentence out of her. 

Harry brightened, but then her face fell again.

"But that's terrible," Harry said. "She'll be so hurt that I've forgotten her." This thought seemed to really rattle her. "Children can't understand this kind of thing. She'll feel like I've abandoned her."

Harry laid down on her side, curled up into a fetal position, her face in her hands.

"John I remember, Sherlock I remember, you I even remember, but I've lost her completely. She'll look at me and I won't recognize her at all."

After a few moments during which Harry took a few deep breaths from behind her hands, she pulled it together enough to drop her hands, look up at Mary, and say, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I've forgotten your daughter."

"It wasn't your fault, Harry," Mary said, with a tear in her eye. "But...I did want to speak to you about how to handle it. You see..."

In the pause Mary left, Harry said, "Where's John?"

FINALLY.

Mary let her tears fall silently for a moment.

"Mary?" Mary shook her head. "Has something happened to John?"

"Oh Harry," Mary burst out. "I didn't want to tell you. But--I need your help--not for me--I need your help--with Rachel--"

Harry closed her eyes, while her clenched jaw trembled. When she opened them, the rims were red.

"Has he been killed?" she said, in a dead and emptied voice.

Mary nodded, weeping.

"Sherlock too?"

Mary nodded again, and turned away.

"How?"

Mary kept her back to Harry, moving her shoulders as if she were silently sobbing.

"They were on a case," Mary said. "Someone got to them. I--" Mary started hyperventilating. "I can't--go into the--"

More dry sobbing. Harry said, "Of course not. I'm sorry."

Mary shook her head. "No, I'm--" 

She took slow, deep breaths. She heard Harry moving behind her, the dead weight of her legs sliding as she pushed herself into a sitting position.

"Can I see him?" Harry said, softly.

Mary had a moment of panic. Then she said, "They were in Chicago when it happened. Their bodies are being...oh God..."

Harry's voice, low and steady. "It's all right, Mary. I thought they might be here in the hospital. You don't have to...I'm sorry." And, as if Harry's brain would only feed her that one phrase, Harry repeated, "I'm sorry, Mary. I'm so, so sorry for your loss." 

Mary turned around. She enjoyed doing an emotional scene once in a while, and this one was interesting. So much inner conflict, so much ambivalence.

"You've forgotten," Mary said, crying. "I keep forgetting you don't know. Harry, I lost John years ago."

"I don't--" Harry began.

"And as for  _Sherlock,_ " Mary spat, "he can rot in hell!"

Harry drew back from the rage in Mary's voice.  

"Your brother  _left_ me for that... _psychopath,_ " Mary ranted on, while Harry stared at her in silence. "I should have known. I should have known I could never compete with Sherlock alive. I could barely compete with Sherlock dead. I knew if John had to choose between us it would be him over me. So I did everything. I included Sherlock in the wedding, I gave them space, I made him Rachel's godfather...oh...you were the godmother, I forgot to mention..."

"Well, I'm--of course I'm honored, Mary, but--I'm really sorry that it didn't--that--"

 "I did  _everything_ I could to include Sherlock," Mary shouted. "Short of inviting him into our bed, and really, I'd have done that too if I'd thought I could stand it."

"Listen--Mary--" Harry said, holding up her hands to ward off any more information. She winced a bit as she moved her splinted wrist. "This is very hard for me to--I mean--you're upset--of course you're upset--I'm upset too--maybe we should talk about this later--after--"

Mary turned away again. This time she didn't have to work to make her shoulders heave. The anger she had created was inflaming her, from her guts upward. It felt almost real.

"A minute," Mary gasped out. "Just--give me one minute."

Mary leaned against the wall, hands on the glazed tile, taking deep breaths, calming herself down.

What  _was_ this?

It did happen sometimes that while you were producing a feeling, it colonized you. But this felt different. It felt more as if some long-suppressed actual feeling--if there was such a thing anyway as a real feeling--had seized the opportunity to escape.

Could it be that...Had she ever...actually  _wanted_ John Watson? Wanted him badly enough to hate the man who would always be there before her?

A moment's introspection ended abruptly when Mary heard a rather strangled and painful noise coming from Harry's direction. She swung around to see Harry Watson bent nearly double, hammering on her own thighs with both clenched fists, and weeping uncontrollably.

"Oh, Harry," Mary said. "Don't, you'll hurt yourself."

Harry's head snapped up.

"Why, Mary?" she demanded. "The doctor won't tell me. But she must have told you. WHY can't I move my legs?"

Mary put a hand to the base of her throat, as if to ease the passage of a truly horrifying speech.

"Your spine was injured in the accident," Mary said, faintly. "They..."

"They WHAT?" Harry demanded. 

"They don't expect..."

Harry swallowed something, and finished it for her.

"They don't expect me to recover."

"I'm sorry, Harry," Mary said, in a choked-up whisper, while Harry's misery seeped into Mary's skin and soaked through to her heart, warming it with the fires of schadenfreude.

Harry wiped the tears from her cheeks and sat up straight.

"Well," she said. "Worse things happen in wartime."

It was so exactly the kind of thing John would have said in that situation. Mary used the little pause this realization caused to prepare her next gambit.

"I know this is...a lot for you to deal with right now, Harry," Mary said. "And I'd never...if I'd known about the...about your memory loss...I wouldn't have come to bother you with this, but...I do need your help."

"About Rachel."

Mary nodded. She drew the stool up close to the table and sat down on it, blinking back tears.

"Does she know...about..." Harry waved her hands vaguely.

"No," Mary forced out, in a miserable whisper. "You were on your way to your apartment when you hit the lorry. I suppose you must have been planning to tell her when you got there. She doesn't know yet."

Harry passed a hand over her forehead and sighed. 

"Well," Harry said. "It'll be better coming from you."

"No, Harry," Mary said, tearfully. "No, that's just it. I can't--you see--"

Mary made saying this seem as painful as in fact it actually was.

"John had sole custody. I--you know--saw her on weekends. She doesn't...she doesn't..."

"Wait," Harry said. "They gave  _John_ sole custody?" 

Mary bit her lip and nodded.

"That's...very unusual," Harry said, narrowing her eyes.

"I know!"

It came out with quite authentic anger and bitterness.

"It must have been very ugly," Harry said.

"It was!"

"Did they...I mean...to deny you joint custody...there must have been a concern for the child's welfare, or--"

"I don't want to talk about it, Harry, all right?" Mary shouted, through streaming tears.

Actually, Mary had initially intended to discuss this with Harry at some length, using a number of methods which had been carefully designed so as to produce the maximum amount of pain with the minimum amount of irreversible tissue damage. Mary had wanted to discuss, quite specifically, all the ways in which what they had done to her over Rachel was unfair, unjust, unethical, unproductive. How they had hurt Rachel by depriving her of the person whose DNA was most obviously determining her development. How all the time they thought they were sticking it to Mary, they were really sticking it to Rachel. How they clearly had no idea how to bring that child up, and how Mary was the only one capable of doing it because she was the only one who knew how important AGRA discipline had been for her. How it takes a psychopath to parent a psychopath, or at least to do it in a way that Rachel's antisocial and violent tendencies might eventually contribute to society instead of just tearing it apart. That Rachel was HER child, not just John's, definitely never Sherlock's, and certainly not someone in whom Harry fucking Watson had any legitimate interest. And that what she was doing by bringing Rachel to AGRA was right and necessary for Rachel, and that Harry's death, like John's and Sherlock's, was something that Harry herself had made necessary by making it clear that as long as any of  _them_ were alive, Rachel would be forever deprived of the help Mary could provide--the help that Rachel's first nine years proved that she so desperately needed.

But Harry had lost the last ten years. They could not have that conversation. The plan had changed. Mary had to move on.

Except that the next thing Harry did was stare rather piercingly at Mary and say, "Do you have any...proof...that they're actually dead?"

Mary slammed her hands on Harry's metal table and screamed at her.

"This is EXACTLY--this is--how DARE YOU, Harriet Watson? HOW DARE YOU?"

"No--" Harry said, waving her hands at her and wincing. "No--I don't mean--I only meant--"

"I know EXACTLY what you meant!" Mary shouted. 

She stomped toward the door as dramatically as she could. 

"No, Mary, you don't!" Harry shouted.

Mary stopped, still trembling with anger.

"All I meant was that Sherlock has faked his death before, and--I mean if someone just  _told_ you that they were dead, I would want to--"

While taking angry-sounding breaths, Mary pulled out her link, downloaded the photo included in the kill report, sent it to Harry's phone, and put it up full screen.

"Is  _that_ good enough for you?" she shouted, spinning around and brandishing the phone.

Harry took a breath that caught.

"Can I--can I see--"

Mary tossed the phone contemptuously into her lap.

Harry picked it up. She scrutinized the image on the screen. It showed John and Sherlock, right before their bodies had been taken out of the back of the limo. Sherlock lay sprawled across the back seat, his limbs askew, his mouth open, his face ruddy, his eyes closed. John appeared to have died attempting to get the limo's passenger door open; he lay slumped against it, curled fetally on the limo floor, one hand pathetically outstretched. There was not a mark on either of them. They might have been waxworks. Mary found the image oddly satisfying to contemplate.

"That's how they were found," Mary said, in sepulchral tones, still huffing a bit with the expected emotion. "Carbon monoxide poisoning."

Harry shook her head. Her hands clenched around the phone for a moment, then relaxed. She handed it back to Mary, slowly.

"I'm sorry, Mary," she said. "Here's your phone back."

Harry didn't recognize the phone as hers, of course. It definitely wasn't what she'd been carrying ten years earlier. Mary had expected that, or she wouldn't have let Harry touch it; but still, it was nice to have it confirmed. 

"I suppose I'm...you know. It's natural," Harry said, snuffling. "To be in denial. A bit. He's my only--he was my only--and--"

Harry fought against a fresh bout of tears. The tears had been delicious at first, but Mary was getting  a bit tired of waiting for Harry to stop.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, for about the hundredth time. "I didn't mean to imply...whatever you thought I was implying."

Mary shook her head. "It's all right. I'm...my God, this is awful."

Harry looked up at her, and the abject grief on her face was unexpectedly painful to see. 

"I know," she said. "Isn't it?"

Before Harry could start crying again, Mary said, "I think Rachel should hear it first from you."

Harry stared at her.

"Mary, I'm a stranger to her now. I think it should come from--"

"She doesn't like me," Mary burst out. "She doesn't trust me. Your brother and Sherlock have poisoned her against me. She thinks I'm a liar. And. Well. I have lied to her, on occasion. I have told her things about John and Sherlock that weren't strictly true. I was--I was--so angry."

Harry watched her silently.

"You're the only one who ever spoke up for me to her," Mary said, putting a hand on Harry's unbroken wrist. "And Rachel trusts you. She does. I think you should be the one to tell her. Their bodies will be here tomorrow morning. The funerals are planned for the day after. She's already passed into my custody, Harry," Mary said. "But she doesn't understand why and I can't do a thing with her. She needs you. I'm sorry it's so awful for you right now, I really am, but Rachel needs you to be there for her and to tell her what she needs to know."

"While telling her that I have no idea who she is and no way actually of confirming that anything you've told me about her history is true."

Mary shook her head. "I thought--we could do this--without her knowing that you've lost your memory."

"How?" Harry said, after a short and astonished pause.

"If I tell you enough about her," Mary said. "You could improvise. I know you can. You're--well--you've been a great lawyer, Harry," Mary said, admiringly. "One of the best in London. The way you prepare, people say, they've never seen anything like it. It's one conversation. She's only nine years old. You can do this. I know you can."

There was a long silence. Finally, Harry took a deep breath.

"Would you say that Rachel is an intelligent child, Mary?" she finally said.

"Yes," Mary answered promptly.

Harry sighed.

"Get me something to take notes with."

"Oh thank you, Harry," Mary breathed. "I can't thank you enough, you don't know what this means for me--"

"I'm not doing it for you, Mary," Harry said. "I'm doing it for your daughter. And for me. Because I have been abandoned once or twice myself, you understand."

So have I, Mary thought. And you had no pity on me.

"I'll be right back," Mary said.

She walked to the sliding steel door and keyed in the access code.

As soon as it shut, she ducked into the observation alcove. Ada was sitting on the stool, staring through the window, and she actually literally had a bowl of popcorn on the counter and was eating from it.

"This is fascinating," Ada said, with her mouth full. "Brilliant. Unbelievable. What do you need? Paper and pencils? I can get some from the maths classroom."

"Probably," Mary said. "Her memory's been reset ten years back, if you give her a tablet she won't even know how to operate it."

"Will you let me watch the conversation with Rachel?" Ada said, with those big bright eyes. "Oh please say you will."

"Of course," Mary said. "Go."

Ada flew out the door. Mary looked through the window.

Harry was talking to herself. Not out loud. She was moving her hands in the air, in smaller versions of the gestures Mary knew so well. Her lips were moving, her head tilting a bit as she emphasized certain words.

She was already starting to prep.

Mary felt joyful anticipation filling her up inside.

This was the best idea she had ever had. This was going to be FANTASTIC.

END CHAPTER


	13. HOW TO GET OUT OF A LOCKED ROOM

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY EIGHT**

I am working on this essay for school right now and my Dad thought it would make a good blog entry. I hope you enjoy it.

**HOW TO GET OUT OF A LOCKED ROOM**

By Rachel Watson

For this week's theme we were asked to write up a list of instructions explaining as thoroughly as possible how to do a complex task. I have decided to write about how to get out of a locked room. It can be quite a complex task although the principles involved are simple. There are five steps but you may not have to follow all of them.

 **1\. Determine where the existing exits are**. 

Most people assume that the only way you can get out of a room is through a door or a window. Do not make that mistake! Many things have to come into a room and go out of it besides people, such as air, and water if it's a bathroom or a kitchen or any room that has a sink or tub or toilet. If you are small and agile enough you can sometimes use one of these non-people exits. There are lots of stories where people climb through a building by means of the air ducts, for instance. In real life that is not so easy. I don't know if it's that the architects started reading those stories or for what reason but most air ducts are too small for even me to fit through. But if for instance the room is in a big complex and there is an automated waste removal system that uses negative pressure to suck rubbish out of the room and into a conduit, you might be able to get through that. The thing to do first though is test it with some kind of object whose progress you can track and see what happens to it. A tablet computer is a good object to try this with because you will hear the crunch when it hits the shredding blades. Just make sure it is not your own tablet computer or one belonging to someone who has not been mean to you. Also if you think that tablet might have useful information, make sure to memorize it or write it down before you use it for the test. 

**2\. Identify an existing exit that is safe to use. If none of the existing exits are safe to use, proceed directly to step 4.**

For instance, if the existing exit is a waste disposal tube that leads into the darkness and eventually to shredder blades, it is not safe to use. 

**3\. Open the existing exit and pass through it.**

Nearly any room you are locked up in will have a door, which will be locked. How to open it depends on what kind of door. If it is a door like they typically have in old houses and apartments, you know a door on hinges with a knob or latch that you can turn, then you are in luck because that is very easy as long as you have a screwdriver and hammer or their equivalents. You can take off the hinges if they are on your side of the door. If they are not, you can unscrew the doorknob and once you have that off you can get the mechanism to open.

If the door is a sliding automatic metal door, that is a different kind of problem. Usually it will be controlled by a keypad or card reader or retina scanner or something. If you are good at guessing passwords you might be able to use a keypad but you cannot get anything past a card reader or a retina scanner. However this does not matter as much as you might think. My Dad is a great believer in the manual override and so am I. An automatic door is worked by a mechanism which you can usually get at if you have a crowbar or something like a crowbar that you can use to pry off the moulding and punch holes in the wall. The big metal bar that people put in closets to hang clothes on is excellent for this purpose. Usually there is a belt driven by a motor that pulls each half of the door into a recess in the wall and then brings it back out. You might think that cutting the belt, which is easy enough to do, would solve your problem the same way that taking off the doorknob does with a traditional door. Actually the problem is that the door is so blooming heavy that if you cut the belt you will never get it moving again. The thing to do is get to the motor that drives the belt. If you can locate the wires that go to the power source and figure out how to connect the circuit that makes the motor turn, then you can get the belt going and retract the door even if you can't use the keypad or card key swipe or retina scan or whatever it is that you normally have to input to get the electronics to send the motor the 'turn on and move the blooming door' signal. 

The great thing about automatic doors that are split in the middle and open out to both sides, like the ones they have on lifts and on the starship  _Enterprise_ , is that even if you mess up on one side, for instance by cutting the belt because you thought that would work, you still have the other side to work with.

**4\. If you cannot open any of the existing exits, create a new exit.**

It is much easier sometimes to get through the actual wall than it is to get through the door, especially with new construction. Drywall is much easier to break than sheetrock and plaster. Any really heavy object used as a battering ram will suffice. Usually there will be a space on the other side of it for beams and electrical and so forth and then you just bash away at the wall on the other side. Once you have a large enough hole, you crawl through it.

**5\. Go exploring!**

An environment that contains locked rooms often contains many other interesting things. Also it is possible that you may have set off one or more alarms. In that case I recommend getting as far away from the room as possible, and finding a small enclosed space in which to hide.

I hope these instructions will be helpful to you if you one day find yourself in a locked room. Also I would like to thank you for giving us this assignment because I have really enjoyed writing this and up to this point I have really not enjoyed writing for school very much.

Rachel Watson


	14. THE THREE Rs

**HEADMASTER'S OFFICE**

**THE PRIORY SCHOOL**

**SOUTH DOWNS**

**7:00 PM GREENWICH MEAN TIME**

 

"No, Mr. Elkton," said Donovan, in a neutral but not at all pleasant tone. "I can see that your client is legally a minor. What you apparently do not see is that both the murder of Harriet Watson and the abduction of Rachel Watson were accomplished with the aid of at least one electronic communications device. This defines both crimes as cyber-terrorism under the All-Island Surveillance Act."

The lawyer on the right opened his mouth. Donovan, holding up an admonishing finger, continued before Elkton could move any more air through it.

"Your client played a leadership role in getting the AISA through Parliament.  _He_ presumably can tell you that under the AISA, persons suspected of cyber-terrorism can be detained for questioning for up to 72 hours before anyone asks to see a shred of evidence in support of this suspicion. As a minor suspected of participation in cyber-terrorism--"

"This is outrageous!" bellowed Portia's father. "My daughter is nine years old! You can't possibly--"

"Shhh."

Donovan brought the fingers and thumb of her outstretched left hand together with a snap.

"Mr. Chudleigh-Smith, after one more outburst I will ban you from the interview room."

His portly cheeks swelled with wind and self-importance. "On what authority?"

"On the authority granted me by the All-Island Surveillance Act. You have _read_ the AISA, Mr. Chudleigh-Smith? You do  _know_ what it says?"

Mr. Chudleigh-Smith lowered his carefully tailored trouser seat back into the spindle-backed chair he had pulled up to the other side of the desk. Portia sat in the leather armchair across from Donovan, chewing on the end of her blonde braid, gazing with no very flattering expression upon her father's humiliation.

Donovan clasped her hands, pushed them into the middle of the desk, and leaned forward.

"You're Rachel's roommate, aren't you, Portia?"

"You don't have to answer that, pumpkin," said Mr. Chudleigh-Smith. 

Portia rolled her blue eyes and sighed.

"My name's Sally," said Donovan. "I'm a friend of Rachel's. Rachel was taken away from here on Saturday morning in a car driven by someone who was pretending to be her Aunt Harriet. Since then nobody's seen or heard from her. Nobody knows where she is and her Aunt Harriet has also disappeared. When a child gets into a car driven by an adult who is pretending to be someone else, that child is in great danger. The adult is almost certainly planning to harm her. I need to find Rachel as soon as possible. You can make that easier for me by answering my questions truthfully." Donovan smiled into Portia's impassive, pink-cheeked face. "Will you do that for me, Portia?"

Portia said nothing. She glanced at her father. She glanced back at Donovan. She tried to look bored. Donovan knew better than to be fooled by it. 

"Rachel's parents gave her a new tablet phone when she went off to school. The tablet is missing from her room, and according to Rachel's parents its wifi signal was nonstandard and scrambled. That's a bit difficult to explain, but basically it means that we can't access it remotely and we also can't identify transmissions that were routed in and out of it, so we have no way of tracing Rachel's online activity. We know that she spent a great deal of time on a site called Hecate's Haven. It would be very helpful to us to know more about what she did there and whether she corresponded privately with anyone she met there. Is there anything you can tell us about Rachel's online life?"

Portia shook her head. 

"Rachel never spoke to you about what she did on her tablet? You never looked over her shoulder?" Donovan prompted, gently.

Portia said nothing.

"Can you tell me  _anything_  about Rachel's time here, Portia?" Nothing. "Was she happy at the Priory School?"

Donovan stared at Portia for a few seconds.

"Rachel didn't like me," Portia said. "She ignored me and I ignored her. I don't know anything about her." She looked at her father. "Daddy, I want to go now."

Donovan glared in the father's direction. Mr. Chudleigh-Smith glared back at her.

"You serve at the pleasure of--" he began.

"I know at whose pleasure I serve," Donovan snapped. "If you make another of those veiled threats I will begin to form a suspicion that you too might be implicated in these instances of cyberterrorism."

"Try it and I'll have your head," he snapped.

Left and right, the lawyers sought to intervene with him.

"No, it's all right," said Donovan, to the lawyers. "We're nearly finished. One moment."

Donovan leaned toward Portia's father.

"It's 7:00pm on a Saturday night in the middle of Sussex. Good luck finding anyone in Westminster willing to take notice of your petty difficulties and moved enough by them to send someone down here. I have the title and the badge and the weapon and the authority and the local police will obey me and not you. Even if you have me sacked on Monday, you'll be spending Sunday in an undisclosed location being interrogated using a number of experimental methods which have recently been green-lighted for use by the police. You will never forget that day, Mr. Chudleigh-Smith, no matter what you may later do to me personally."

Chudleigh-Smith's face had gone an interesting shade of gray.

"This is the world you made," Donovan said. "I hope you'll enjoy your stay."

Chudleigh-Smith found his splutter. "Of all the ungrateful--"

Donovan slammed one hand down on the desk.

" _Don't_ say the word  _gratitude_ to me," Donovan growled. "EVER."

She turned back to Portia.

The child, of course, had no idea what was going on. She wasn't to know how it had all gone down. How after five years of recommending Sally for promotion till he was blue in the face, after five years of waiting in vain for his  _own_ promotion, Lestrade had seen Selkirk's men come in, give him the sack, and put Sally into his old job. How he had taken a kind of painful pride in removing his nameplate, that last day in the office, and presenting Sally with her own. How Sally had watched him go, thinking that it was a bit of a shame but his heart really wasn't in it any more, and her time was long overdue, and at last Sherlock Holmes was out of her hair. How they had given her a year to settle in and get used to the salary and the authority and the respect and the rapid promotion. And then how they had begun to make it known, through requests and hints and pressures applied in ways large and small, that Selkirk's men wished it to be known that instead of recognizing her merit, they had in fact been buying her loyalty, and it was about time for their investment to begin paying dividends.

And with cold anger and even colder hatred, she had begun to work out the calculations. How many cases had to go unsolved, how many innocent suspects had to be framed, how many abuses of force would have to be condoned, what was the minimum she had to engage in in terms of lying to the public, in order to keep her job. How long she would have to go on doing this in order to collect the information she would need to expose them all. How much of her job she could still actually do, outside of the limelight and among the other superintendents and detective inspectors who were starting to realize that they had been promoted because Selkirk's men thought they could be easily pushed around.

It had been sickening. It had at times been harrowing. It had been dangerous and dirty. But it had been working. 

And then she got the call from Lestrade about Rachel.

Why was this always the way with Sherlock Holmes? Years of patient undercover work, done with that slow and methodical but deadly effectiveness in which Lestrade had trained her, all about to be blown to bits because Sherlock Holmes had breezed into town surrounded by danger, crisis, and intrigue and urgency and it all had to be addressed RIGHT AWAY. No matter whose heart it broke. Chudleigh-Smith knew now that Selkirk's men didn't own her and would not rest until she was replaced with someone who would make the world safer for him.

If it were Sherlock or John, she would have turned her back on this case. She would gladly have told Sherlock to go fuck himself, told Lestrade not to come to her with any more of Sherlock's shit, told John that he should have listened to her that night in London and stayed the fuck away. 

But it was not about them. It was about a nine-year-old girl who had been abducted by someone with a history of violence, who had posed as another child to gain her trust. 

Lestrade started in narcotics. To this day, any time he had to interact with a drug dealer the blood vessels in his forehead pulsed with rage. Your first post stayed with you. The first time you saw the hideous price that the victims paid for the crimes you were charged with preventing, you did not forget. 

Sally had started in missing persons, special children's task force.

"So," she said to Portia. "You have no knowledge whatsoever of Rachel's activities, in real life or online, is that correct?"

Portia nodded.

"Say yes or no, please."

"Yes," Portia said. 

Donovan propped up her tablet and began pulling up the casefile.

"So this message posted to SlamWham under the username PoRRRscheGirl," Donovan said, nonchalantly. "The one that reads, 'Today is Don't Talk To Rachel Day. All day.' That wasn't you?"

Portia's eyes widened. Her mouth opened a little.

"And this one here, 'Tomorrow's game is called Hide Rachel's Homework. Message me to get your assignment.' That wasn't you either?"

"How did you get that?" Portia demanded, loudly.

"Darling!" her father barked. "Do not respond to the questions unless--"

"Don't ask questions like that, Portia," Donovan said, with a sigh. "It will really slow things down. Your tablet has a unique IP address which was registered in a government-maintained database when your father bought it. I spent the ride out here pulling everything posted from that IP address to every social media network in existence. Everything you've ever posted about Rachel, I have. All the things you thought you were getting away with because you posted them under some made-up user name. I've read them all, Portia. You understand? I. Have. Everything."

It was not much satisfaction to make a nine-year-old girl cry; but the thought that the sight of Portia crumbling might cause her father pain was some consolation.

"If you have everything then why are you even talking to me?" Portia burst out, as her eyes reddened.

"Because you're not smart enough to have organized all this yourself," Donovan said. "All the activities of the Run Rachel Ragged Club, of which you are the founding member, are part of a very carefully planned campaign of psychological warfare. It was clearly planned by an adult."

Portia wiped her running nose on her sleeve. Her father grimaced.

"Was it your father?" Donovan said, after a pause.

Portia snuffled. She looked in his direction.

"NO!" bellowed Chudleigh-Smith. "Why would I--why would ANYONE do a thing like that?"

"I'll tell you why," Donovan snapped. "Because if you are an internet predator who wants to abduct a child, the first thing you do is alienate that child from her real-life environment. You make that child so miserable and so isolated that she will come to rely more and more on the affirmation and moral support that you provide. The worse her real environment gets the more she fantasizes about escaping to the alternative which is being dangled in front of her by the predator. That is why you would do such a thing, Mr. Chudleigh-Smith. It is called grooming and it is absolutely textbook and if your daughter refuses to disclose the identity of the  _monster_ who organized this I will have you,  _sir,_ detained for seventy-two hours while I  _question_ you about how you managed to produce a child capable of becoming the tool of this scheme."

"I--"

" _Was_ it your father, Portia?" Donovan said. "Because if it was, then you're not in trouble any more."

"It was him!" Portia shouted, pointing at her own father. "It was, it was, it was! He promised me--he said I would get a new bicycle and that he would do my homework for me for a whole month and he's never once done it and--"

"Portia, stop talking," barked the laywer on the left.

Chudleigh-Smith popped out of his seat. Sweat had broken out all over his head.

"It was not my idea!" he shouted, while his lawyers flailed at him. "I was under orders!"

The lawyer on the left literally slumped over and banged his head three times against the top of the desk. The lawyer on the right pulled out his mobile and began dialing.

"From whom?" said Donovan.

There was a look of sheer terror on Chudleigh-Smith's face that Donovan thought could only mean that the absolutely insane text that Lestrade had forwarded to her from Sherlock might actually contain some truth.

"Did this individual," Donovan replied, "contact you on behalf of an organization known as AGRA?"

Chudleigh's face practically melted right off, it was so dragged down by fear and despair.

"How did she contact you?"

He looked down at the table. 

"By phone," he said, with a sigh.

Lawyer on the right got up and left the room.

"Which phone did you use to speak with her?" Donovan said.

Chudleigh-Smith reached into his pocket and pulled out a burner phone. Without a word from Donovan, he placed it on top of the desk. Donovan mentally added Chudleigh-Smith's balls to her growing collection.

"Thank you," said Donovan. She took a latex glove out of her sleeve, slipped it on, and placed the phone inside a plastic evidence bag, which she tucked into her briefcase. "That's very helpful."

"Can I go now?" Portia said.

"In a moment," Donovan replied. She turned back to the father. "How did this woman identify herself?"

Donovan tapped the tablet screen to open a window for taking notes. 

"She said her name was Ada."

END CHAPTER


	15. ELEPHANTS ON PARADE

**7:30 PM**

**MEDICAL RETENTION CELL**

**AGRA**

"Wait a moment. Wait wait wait. Give me the list of schools Rachel has attended, in order, with entrance and exit dates." Harry was writing with her left hand, awkwardly, holding the blank paper Ada had scared up over the back of a clipboard on her lap. 

Mary put a hand up to her forehead. This was not fun any more. Mary did in fact have all of those dates memorized, but she was not about to tip Harry off by displaying suspiciously professional powers of recall. She'd made that mistake in front of Sherlock at the wedding. And yet Harry's infuriating and endless demands for specific times, dates, and places were so uniquely annoying that Mary was sure she had already given away more information than was plausible for an ordinary woman who had only seen her daughter every other weekend and had not been, for instance, stalking her through every surveillance technology known to man for the past nine years.

Mary spun away from the table. "I don't  _remember_ the exact dates, Harry!"

"Well, dig deep," Harry said, waving at her with her splinted wrist. "OW! CHRIST almighty!"

"Do you think I have a database in my head where I'm keeping all of this?" Mary shouted. 

"I think you might!" Harry fired back, nursing her splinted wrist. "Jesus. This hospital gets NO FUCKING MARKS for pain management."

"They're running tests this afternoon to assess your spinal injury," Mary replied, inventing easily and effortlessly. "Narcotics would interfere with that."

Harry glowered at her. "Well can you not  _add_ to my pain, at least? Give me the dates."

"Harry," she said, "I'm exhausted. You're exhausted. Don't you think you have enough?"

Harry looked at her.

"I would have enough if I were going into court," Harry said, in a voice which seemed quite impersonal. "But in terms of convincing a child that I actually know who she is...I mean I have very little. I know about all the problems she's had but I don't know what she finds funny, I don't know what she's afraid of, I don't know her favorite color even. Do you?"

Mary thought. She shook her head.

"Does Rachel have any pets?"

Mary felt a chill of panic.  _Did_  Rachel keep pets? She hadn't mentioned any in her conversations with Broomhilde1135, but 221B was still surveillance-camera-free--Sherlock had managed to hold the line somehow, even after Mycroft's death--and she didn't know much about what actually went on in there. 

"No." Safer that way; Harry wouldn't bring it up.

"Does she have a favorite toy, something--"

"A stuffed elephant. It's called Elfanant. It's a million years old and absolutely leaping with bacteria." Elfanant had been incinerated before entry. One sniff and Mary knew that it would never make it past the bioscreens.

"Friends?"

"No friends."

Harry was taken aback.

"That's very sad," Harry said. "Why not?"

Mary folded her arms and considered her reply.

"She's prone to violent behavior and has some antisocial tendencies."

Harry blinked. "Oh." Harry returned from wherever her brief introspection had taken her. "Well. Better get the facts straight, then, many of these 'antisocial tendencies' go with what I in my ignorance have always called 'laywer personality.'"

Mary allowed herself another laugh. Then she said, "God forgive me."

"God forgive all of us," Harry replied. "Give me the dates. I know you know them."

"Harry, what does it matter?" Mary burst out. "She's not going to cross examine you!"

"You don't know what she's going to do!" Harry retorted. "The first time you do a task, Mary, you have a choice: you can do it fast, or you can do it right. Which do you prefer?"

Mary sighed, and resumed her seat on the stool.

"How long will this go on?" Mary said, leaning her elbows on the edge of the table and thinking of Rachel alone in her quarters, hungry and angry and probably very, very bored.

"Forever, if you keep stopping to complain about it," Harry replied.

Mary ground her teeth to keep from snapping back. Harry was right. Mary had one shot. Better right than fast.

* * * *

**7:30 PM**

**VISITOR PARKING**

**THE PRIORY SCHOOL**

**SOUTH DOWNS, SUSSEX**

"There she is," Molly said.

Lestrade turned around in the driver's seat to see where Molly was pointing. He followed the line of her outstretched arm across the parking area to the hulk of the Priory School's main building--one of those old pseudo-Gothicky piles, all columns and points and weird colors of stone. It was still not yet fully in silhouette, and he could distinguish the figure of Assistant Commissioner Sally Donovan letting the heavy oak door fall behind her as she strode across the parking lot. It struck him that her pace did not suggest quite the level of urgency that was currently agitating the old ulcer in Lestrade's gut. He admired Sally's extraordinary fidelity to Occam's razor. For most cases it was quite a useful tool. On a case involving anyone named Holmes, however, you had to be careful you didn't cut your throat with it. There's nothing wrong with Sally's brain, Lestrade thought, as her form loomed larger. Always said it was better than mine. It's her gut that leads her astray. Instinct. She doesn't have it. Or if she does, she doesn't listen to it.

The post-Selkirk reorg, for instance. Lestrade had known what that was about from day one. Sally wouldn't have it. Not until she had deduced it for herself.  _Why didn't you tell me?_ she'd said, that horrible night at his flat, while Molly poured her a fifth cup of tea. You wouldn't have believed me, he'd said. And he had not added,  _I couldn't take it away from you, the promotion. Because you did deserve it. You deserved it years ago._

Lestrade became suddenly very impatient with Sally's pace. He popped the car door and hurried out to meet her.

Sally stopped right in the middle of the parking lot. Lestrade was so distracted by computing the number of positions around them from which anyone might put a bullet into either of their heads that at first he couldn't listen to what she was saying.

"Chudleigh-Smith's given up everything we're going to get from him," Lestrade heard. "He knows about this...secret society of Sherlock's, but someone in it was smart enough to keep him out of the loop. He's terrified of their getting to him, but that's about all. I've been through the school's video surveillance--"

"Yes, yes," Lestrade said, taking her by the elbow. "Into the car, Assistant Commissioner. Let's not have this conversation in the open."

Sally expressed her derision in a variety of ways, but she did allow him to draw her toward cover and open the passenger side door for her.

Molly's presence of course occasioned no comment, but the sight of Janine, still wrapped up in hospital blankets, in the seat next to Molly provoked a noise of exasperation.

"Why on earth is she not still in hospital?" Sally demanded.

"Because I don't fancy being attacked again," Janine shot back.

"As we're now in rebellion against our current government," Lestrade said, cheerfully, "we're taking our cues from the Americans. Hang together or hang separately. It's easier to take out a target alone than it is to take out three. Or four, as the case may be."

Lestrade put the car in gear.

"What are you doing?" Sally shouted. "My car is right over--"

"Yes," Lestrade cut in, as he nosed Molly's tiny Fiat out from under the overhanging trees. "And a few moments ago I saw a man with a mobile looking at it with great interest while he was chatting to someone. And then he got into his lawyermobile and drove off with some haste. I wouldn't go back to your car for a while yet, Assistant Commissioner. And in fact I'd like to be far away from it the first time someone tries to unlock the driver's side door."

"For Christ's sake," said Sally. "There is nothing the matter with my car. Look."

He knew, without actually looking, that she had taken out her keyless remote and was pointing it through the rear window at the government-issued and government-owned Lexus that had been one of the perks of her new position. 

"Sally, DON'T!" Molly shouted. Lestrade, knowing of old the strength of Donovanian stubbornness, merely put the hammer down. 

The little Fiat still had some go in her. They all rocketed out of the drive onto the main road just as earshattering thunder burst from the parking lot they had left behind. Vermilion flames erupted in his rearview mirrors, and a smell of burning infiltrated the cabin. But the car itself was unharmed, and bouncing merrily along the road.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Janine ejaculated. "Was it not enough for you that I was half-killed by these people? Could you please not _test_ anything else, for the duration?"

Sally turned around, still somewhat wild-eyed, and slid silently back down into the passenger seat. She buckled her seatbelt and stared stonily at the road ahead of her.

"Well now," Lestrade said. "Would you reach into the glove box and pull out the little...it's a little black thing, it looks like a GPS only it's thinner and wider..."

Snapping herself out of it, Sally found the tracking screen. "Is this it?"

"Brilliant. Now stick it onto the dash, it'll start up on contact."

Sally pressed the back of the screen against the dashboard. Lestrade heard the tiny hard drive booting up, and the chime indicating readiness.

"Put it in trace mode," he said.

Sally pressed the requisite buttons. From the blue arrow indicating the position of the Fiat, a faint silver line began to unroll, one pixel at a time.

"This is not a legally registered electronic device, is it, sir," Sally said.

"I'm not on the force any more and if I were I wouldn't still be your superior," Lestrade said. "Call me whatever you like now, but let's dispense with 'sir.' I'm starting not to like the sound of the word."

"Answer the question," Sally persisted.

"No, it is not."

"And what is its purpose?"

"Its purpose right now is to lead us to the last known location of Rachel Watson."

"May I ask how?" Sally inquired.

"The short answer is," Lestrade said, "that an Elfanant never forgets."

Sally sighed.

"And what's the long answer?"

"Elfanant is Rachel's lovey," Molly piped up, from the back seat. "It's been impregnated with a genetically engineered microbe--"

"Oh my God," Sally groaned.

"It's perfectly harmless and non-infectious," Molly said, stiffly. "It incorporates a radioactive marker--"

"You made  _Elphanant_ radioactive?" Janine demanded. "Rachel eats, breathes, and sleeps that thing--"

"--which is quite safe at this concentration," Molly continued, raising her voice to drown out Janine's. "The microbes go everywhere, you know--they spread on contact and --so even though she was in Harry's car, they were still getting spit out through the air vents, so we can track the car this way without access to police surviellance."

" _How_ long has Elfanant been radioactive?" Janine pressed.

"Since Mycroft," Lestrade answered. He squinted at the line, which so far ran straight ahead along the road. "At least that's when Sherlock came by to give me the tracker, which as you have apparently deduced, Sally, is an illegally modified GPS. I thought it was all daft at the time. People get paranoid, you know, after a death in the family. Never threw it out, though. Kept it charged and ready. You never know with Sherlock, Sally. The more lunatic the idea, the more important it may turn out to be."

Sally didn't want to hear it. Well, nobody liked to lose face.

"You were saying you'd been through the school's surveillance," Lestrade prompted.

Sally appeared to be grateful for the chance to discuss something neither illegal nor irregular. "The pickup was recorded," Sally said. "Of course the quality is terrible, but you can see enough to confirm most of..." She gritted her teeth. "Most of Sherlock's deductions. It was in fact Harry's car; the license plate is a match and so is the configuration of bumper stickers. The driver was photographed during her stop at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the grounds, per school policy. Once again, the quality is terrible, plus nobody thought to ask her to remove her dark glasses, so it would be difficult to make a positive ID from a courtroom point of view. However," Sally sighed, again girding her loins for the admission, "Sherlock's hypothesis that the driver was Rachel's mother is most likely accurate. Compared to a photo of Mary Morstan from ten years earlier, there are no major discrepancies that can't be accounted for by normal aging." Sally took a deep breath. "Rachel appears from the video to have entered the car voluntarily and to have shown no surprise upon discovering--as she must have--that the driver was not Harry Watson."

"Collusion in advance," Lestrade murmured.

Sally nodded, decisively. "We can't know what Rachel believed she was doing by getting into that car. Whatever it was, she'd have thought it was her own idea. Children like Rachel--precocious, smart, hyperverbal children--they're very vulnerable to adult manipulation. These children speak like adults so people treat them like adults and they get used to the idea that they're just like adults. And they don't realize how little they know about how adults actually work."

The silver line began to flicker. Lestrade slowed the car down, waiting for it to recover its strength.

"Tell you something about Rachel," Janine said, as the Fiat crawled anxiously along. "She's obnoxious, right, all even her preschool teachers had that spotted. But it was all bravado. She'd slag you off when you caught her at something just because it hurt her so much to think she'd let you down. Harry thought--"

Janine sort of gulped a bit over the past tense.

"Harry thought the sun rose and set over that child. At least when she was younger, you know. It's been a while since I--"

Molly was quick to chime in. "No, it's the same now. She'll sneak things behind your back but when you call her out she confesses. You tell her not to play with the glass slides, she doesn't mind, she breaks one of them, and then she's inconsolable. She flies into these rages sometimes but--but--I mean Rachel doesn't understand cruelty," Molly said. "She doesn't understand dishonesty. I mean, Sherlock, all right, there are family stories about _his_ lies, but...she doesn't call them lies, she calls it 'tricking.' Like it's a game."

Sally gave out an ironic laugh which rhymed with the one from Janine and the one Lestrade felt tickling the back of his own throat.

"But that's exactly what I'm talking about," Molly insisted. "From her point of view, you know, when a grown-up tells an outrageous--just--triple-decker lie, it's always  _for_ something. It's for someone else's good or for the greater good or for Britain or whatever. And then when you've accomplished whatever, you know, you come clean and the lie's over and everyone's glad you told it because all the baddies are gone now. I don't think she gets it that people lie sometimes just to get what they want. Or that you can lie to someone because you're _trying_ to hurt them."

Nobody felt like responding to that. 

The silver light grew stronger. Lestrade accelerated, cautiously.

"I hope we don't have to go far," Molly said, finally. "The petrol tank's not very big, and I'm afraid we're losing the light."

The sky was a shade of blue that warned of twilight to come. Molly was right to worry. Lestrade began to worry, too; but then the silver line went insane. It took a hard right, bouncing right off the road entirely, and snaking about as if it were whitewater rafting.

"Brace yourselves, ladies," Lestrade called back, as he swung the wheel. "We're in for a wild ride."

"Oh Greg," Janine drawled, as the Fiat rattled off the road and onto the famous South Downs turf. "I'm sure you say that to all the girls."

Molly let out a laugh. Sally even cracked the tiniest of smiles. Lestrade aimed the car southward, toward the chalk cliffs and the sea and whatever Elfanant's last location would turn out to be.

*   *   *

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY NINE**

The problem with getting out of a room is that you then have to figure out where to go. And even when you have a very good sense of direction which I do it is hard to keep it when there are alarms going off. But I am a fast runner in addition to being a good climber and I was soon very far away from that corridor. I just kept going until I found something I had never seen before in that place, which was a wall in disrepair.

Not disrepair exactly. But there was one panel in this wall that was not totally flush with it. And when I looked at it I realized it was not really a proper wall at all, it was a grate that had been painted with the same rosebud pattern they used on all the wallpaper. It was like a camouflaged grate and behind it there was an air compressor or something big and round and metal and connected to a big ceiling duct. The screws at the top and bottom left corners had come loose and it was just that little bit pulled out from the wall.

So I pulled it open wider and slipped in behind it and then pulled it in so it would be camouflaged again.

Enough light came in from the hall that I could see there was a sort of long narrow space behind the compressor thing. I slid around it. I could just about barely squeeze between the belly of the machine and the wall next to it. There was a sort of square little room behind it. These fat pipes with domed lids that looked like artificial toadstools poked out of the floor in two straight lines. 

I touched the metal pipes carefully. They were cool, but not too cold. They were humming like some kind of engine.

I lay down between them and curled up so that my back was against two of the pipes. The humming was nice on my back. I guess I had been tense this whole because this was the first time I could feel myself relax a bit. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was on board a spaceship that would take me to the moons of Jupiter and the bridge of the ship was right above me, with Lolo in the captain's chair and my Dad at the science station and Harry at the back with that metal thing in her ear. I liked that picture. I kept it in my head. Ahead warp factor one. No anomalies to report. Hailing frequencies open. If I kept looking at that picture, maybe, I could travel toward it. Maybe I could wake up and I would be on that ship. Instead of here, where everyone hated me and was mad at me and never wanted anything to do with me ever again.

END CHAPTER


	16. PRESSURE POINT

**THE SOUTH DOWNS**

**8:05pm**

There were, perhaps, a half-dozen of the myriad satellites orbiting earth at that moment which were properly positioned to view the strange exclamation points made by the round heads and long shadows of the four people who emerged from the four opening doors of the tiny silver car that was parked perpendicular to a low stone wall that wall ran like a serrated slash through the green turf of the South Downs. From above, the pattern of their movements would have been clear enough, though the reason for it might have been difficult to divine. Each of the four exclamation marks slowly described ever larger circles--one to the north, one to the south, one to the east, one to the west--taking in a wider and wider section of the turf. What they were looking for would remain a mystery to the unblinking eyes and unthinking brains of the satellites themselves. There was a small and select group of human intelligences, most of them female, who, had they consulted these satellite feeds, would have been able to guess with some certainty who these people were and what they were doing. Of these, one was in the midst of a long and exhausting conversation with an apparently indefatigable lawyer; another was monitoring that conversation from the other side of a one-way mirror; a third was consulting with her immediate superior on an unrelated matter; and a fourth was curled up behind one of the air compressors on the main level, sleeping fitfully.

It is highly unlikely, therefore, that any human eye noted the moment at which three of the exclamation marks, the dashes stubbornly pointing eastward, began zooming in nearly-straight lines toward the fourth. And it would have been impossible from that distance to hear or identify the sound of Assistant Commissioner For Homicide And Serious Crimes S. Donovan shouting, at the top of her lungs,  _Bring the luminol, Molly, I found the crime scene._

*   *   *   *

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY NINE, CONTINUED**

You know how when someone or something wakes you up really suddenly you don't actually remember it but you are awake and somehow you know what woke you even though you have no clear memory of it?

Well, maybe you don't know that. But there I was, looking up at this girl's face bending over me, and I knew that at some point she must have given my shoulder a shake and said "Hey." But right now she was just staring at me. She was a lot older. I think she was perhaps fifteen. Her hair was in this short spiky cut and most of it was really really black but there were some streaks of white and a few of hot pink and one really nice dark purple streak in a fringey jagged bit that hung over one eye. Also she was wearing quite a bit of eyeliner. Like more than my ex-Aunt Janine wears and that is a lot of eyeliner. She did not look like anyone I had met at this school or hub or whatever it was so far. That was partly because she had a metal ring in one eyebrow and lots of other metal in her ears.

"I'm Alex," she said, sort of looking around and sitting down near me. "It's all right, I won't tell anyone I saw you here."

I sat up. "Is it not allowed to be here?" I said. There were so many rules at this place.

"No," Alex said. She braced herself against the stubby little pipes on the opposite side. "We're not supposed to be alone, ever. Didn't they tell you that when they gave you your uniform?"

I looked down at myself. I had forgotten for a minute that when I went through my mother's wardrobe and sort of broke open some of the locked drawers I found a stack of seven little black outfits in exactly my size. One for every day of the week. And I took one out and the whole time I put it on I was going back over in my mind all those emails and texts from Broomhilde1135 and I did not think that I could possibly have misunderstood the way they kept saying this would be a secret weekend trip and I would be back on Sunday night and my dads would never know and yet somehow my mother had already ordered all these little black shirts and leggings and socks and shoes for me.

"No," I said, because that was easier than going into the whole thing about how I was a visitor.

"You must be new," Alex said. She flipped up the end of one sleeve and took out a little square box she'd been keeping tucked inside it. She opened it up and took out a cigarette. "Want one?"

I sort of felt my eyes goggling. I said, "No thank you." 

"Suit yourself." She put the cigarette in her mouth.

"Is it safe to smoke in here?" I said.

"No," Alex said. "It's an e-cigarette. They won't let you have the real thing in here."

"Well why do they let you have the fake thing then?" I said.

Alex laughed at me. She said, "Education. You know. Someday it might be important, knowing how to smoke." She inhaled. "And you get the nicotine, after all." She closed her eyes. For a moment she reminded me of Lolo and that rather hurt.

"What's your name?" Alex said.

I was about to say Rachel and then I thought, if I don't say Rachel, maybe she will tell me some of the things that everyone at this place seems to have decided not to tell me.

"It's Ariadne," I said.

Alex sort of smiled a bit. "You got lucky," she said. "Could have been Agatha."

"Or Anthrax," I said.

Alex burst out laughing. She looked at me and she said, "You're all right, kid."

I felt so grown up.

"How do you like it here so far?" she said. And the way she said it, it wasn't like the way adults ask questions like that where they're being polite and looking at you but they're not really paying attention. It was like, the way she said it, it was like nobody cool could possibly answer "yes."

"I hate it," I said. Maybe a tiny bit because I wanted to be cool but mainly because at that moment it was extremely true. "I wish I'd never come."

Alex looked straight ahead of her, with a cloud of mist rising around her from the e-cigarette. 

"So do I," she sighed.

I said, "I was supposed to go home on Sunday night but now I can't."

When I felt myself saying  _I can't,_ it was like everything inside me collapsed. I was crying all of a sudden. Really painful messy crying. 

"Whoa, Ariadne," said Alex. "Easy there."

She scooted over next to me and put an arm around my shoulders. I turned around and grabbed her with both arms and put my head on her shoulder and just cried even more.

I said, "I want to go home!"

And Alex said, "Home?" And the way she said it, it was as if I'd told her I wanted to fly to the moons of Jupiter.

I was still crying but I thought all right I chose Ariadne because everyone around here has names that begin with A. You would not set up a school for girls and send out a brochure that says we only take girls whose first names start with A. The girls must get the A names after they come here. And no mum or dad would say, well, her name is Emily but if you want to call her Amanda while she's at school then no worries. The only conclusion one could come to was that none of the girls who came to this school had parents.

Alex said, slowly, "You have somewhere to run to?"

I wondered whether I did. 

Aunt Harriet had told my mother she was done with me. My Dads were in Chicago and they were still mad. I hadn't seen my ex-Aunt Janine in years. Uncle Mycroft was dead and Gammy and Gampy were not well enough to take care of me. The only person I knew for sure was here and cared about me was my mother.

Who had told me we would be away for the weekend and then bought those seven little black outfits.

"I might," I said.

Alex smiled.

"Good," she said. "Because I know a way out of here."

I looked at her eyes and I felt a kind of burning inside. I couldn't tell what was burning or why. But it did make my feet want to move.

I said, "Show me."

****

**221B BAKER STREET**

**8:10pm**

The last of the light was fading as John put his key in the lock of the door to 221b.

His body was still aching from the hours spent huddling in the cold inside that cargo plane, from rattling about during landing, and from the long, harrowing, clandestine ride back from the airport. Their FedEx uniforms were now as filthy and torn as the clothes they had been nearly run down in earlier that morning. Those had been abandoned in Chicago--or rather gifted to Ladd, who seemed to want no other compensation for his services. Their luggage was still at the Drake. Ladd had promised to send it on; but John did not expect they would ever see it again. He rather fancied that Ladd would appropriate it for himself, and perhaps build a shrine out of it.

Sherlock, who had recovered with infuriating speed, vaulted up the stairs two at a time. John remained frozen at the bottom.

"John?" Sherlock inquired, stopping halfway up.

After several moments of struggle, John forced out a whisper. "I can't."

Sherlock descended a few steps. 

"We went to a great deal of trouble to arrange this meeting," Sherlock said. "You must--"

"I CAN'T!" 

Because Rachel was not pelting up the steps behind Sherlock. She was not dragging herself along, leaden with despair, the way she did after a really bad school day. She was not hopping up the steps on one leg and laughing. She was not sitting in the middle of the steps demanding that they give the countersign before she would let them pass. She was not there and she was not doing any of the things she had done on those steps for the past nine years. It was because she was not there that he could not go up those steps. 

"I--can't--go up to the flat and see her not be there, Sherlock," John said, with a gasp after every word. "I can't."

Halfway through his instinctive snort of contempt. Sherlock stopped. John watched Sherlock scrutinize him, the fingertips of one hand lightly brushing the yellowing wallpaper, the fingers of the other curving slightly as if testing the air.

I couldn't do it without you either, John thought. I stayed away and stayed away and stayed away. Because I could not stand not to find you there. To know I would never find you there again.

Sherlock said, "I'll go. You wait."

John nodded.

Sherlock took a last look at him and disappeared.

John nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the door opening. But it was only Mrs. Hudson, peering tipsily at him from her doorway.

"That's right, dearie," she said, a bit unsteadily. "Let him go sort it out. You come in and have a cuppa. You must be exhausted."

It was an inexpressible relief to collapse onto the bench in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen and have tea and biscuits pushed in front of him. He fell on the biscuits with an eagerness that quite startled her. He realized that they hadn't eaten in almost twenty-four hours.

One of Mrs. Hudson's gnarled hands swooped down to pat his own.

"She's alive, dearie," Mrs. Hudson said. "Where there's life there's hope. She'll be tearing the place apart again by tomorrow morning. You'll see."

John gave out a weak laugh. Mrs. Hudson got up and began looking through her fridge. She found some bacon.

"You like it crispy, don't you, dear."

It was Rachel who liked her bacon crispy, nearly burnt. John did not correct her. He watched Mrs. Hudson find the frying pan. He realized that this was now an unfamiliar sight, Mrs. Hudson cooking for him. Rachel's coming had taught him how to feed himself and Sherlock, as well as how to feed her. If they could not find her, John would never touch a stove again. He wouldn't even be able to eat.

Harry was not there to cook for him either.

He and Sherlock would starve. They would be found together in the 221B sitting room, skeletonized, dead for lack of a reason to go on living.

Other fathers were not like this. John's own, for instance. Walked away on a warm day in June with the flowers blooming and the birds singing. Said goodbye to him and Harry in the yard. It's my duty to my country. Be good to your mother. Goodbye. While Harry glared at him with unspoken hatred and John stood to attention, stiff as a tree trunk, saluting. He had seen another version of himself run down the drive after him, crying, begging him  _no, Daddy, please don't go. I'll be good._ But that could not be. His father would hate that. John had to understand. He had to be strong. He had to realize that this was necessary, and not be angry, like Harry, or destroyed, like his mother, crying inside at the kitchen table.

 _Stop saluting_ , John, Harry had said to him, one day. _He doesn't deserve it._ Technically, Harry was wrong about that. An Army Legal Services lawyer was in fact a British Army officer, even if he had never seen combat. And even after their father had become a judge, he was still attached to the Army, somehow. John had never understood exactly and Harry hadn't been able to explain it to him when he was eleven. By the time he'd have been old enough to understand, John had stopped talking about their father altogether.

But of course that wasn't what Harry had really meant.

Catch yourself on, Harry, John retorted silently. Dad was always more a lawyer than a soldier. And which of us became a lawyer? Not me.

Eleven years old. And never a word since. John had the suspicion that he'd kept in touch with Mum for a few years afterward; but he'd never been able to get her to admit it. Now she was gone, and he'd never know any more than what his eleven year old self remembered. That his father had  _left his own children,_ one eleven and one fourteen. Just  _walked away from them._ John could not understand, looking back, what even made that physically possible.

John wondered for a moment if he were remembering something Harry once said or hearing Harry's ghost whisper it to him.  _Really, John, it's important that you know this. Dad was a bastard. He was cruel. To you especially, because you loved him most._

The bacon and its plate landed on the table before him. John picked one piece up mechanically and began chewing on it. It was certainly crispy.

Slowly, as the salty fragments dissolved on his tongue, John came to realize that this was in fact all his fault.

He hadn't walked away from Rachel. But he had sent _her_ away. Sherlock didn't want him to do it; Harry clearly thought it was a terrible idea; Rachel hated the thought of it even before she came to hate the reality. Why had he done it? What demon had made him think that being separated from Rachel could solve any of their problems? Why had he been so desperate to solve them in the first place? There was nothing he wouldn't give to be able to take the old problems back in exchange for this new one.

And never telling her anything about Mary. He'd said he was doing it to protect Rachel. That he didn't want Rachel to know that her own mother had nearly killed Sherlock, had lied to and betrayed him, how confusing and hurtful that would be to her. But Sherlock was right. John should have known. John had eventually stopped looking for his father. But even that never stopped John from missing him.

The silence about Mary had been for John's own benefit. He had wanted to be able to just wish her away. And that had worked brilliantly, hadn't it.

 _Because you loved him most._ Right you are, Ghost of Harry. Jesus, Harry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I ever knocked on your door at 2 o'clock in the morning with that fucking flash drive in my hand. I'm so sorry I dragged you into this mess. I'm so so sorry that you're dead because of me and my child and my psychotic ex-wife.

"Don't cry, dearie," Mrs. Hudson said. "She's still there for you to find, isn't that what matters? Look at all the mad rubbish Sherlock has found in his day, some of it much smaller and much father away. If he could find that bloody beryl coronet, he can find his own child. Never you fear."

John closed his eyes and tried to gulp down his rising panic. He tilted his head back, took a deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling, as if by doing so he could see right through it, to the room upstairs where Sherlock had solved so many other problems.

*   *   *   *

**221B BAKER STREET, UPSTAIRS FLAT**

**8:11pm**

That she was sitting in the darkest corner of the room didn't surprise Sherlock. It was not about vanity. Though her hair was that indefinite frosted color that all women of distinction now adopted when they were clearly too old to be naturally blonde, and though her face was now that of an old woman, Lady Smallwood's body had stood the test of time. He had time to appreciate that as she rose to greet him, silently. Black pillbox hat with black veil. Black suit jacket. Black skirt. Black hose. Black pumps. For five years, Lady Smallwood had worn black every day of her professional life. In Parliament, at press conferences, at ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Nobody noticed. Nobody knew she was in mourning. A lot of people wore black.

"You're sure you weren't followed?" said Sherlock.

"It would have been impossible," Lady Smallwood answered.

Sherlock indicated John's chair. With the memories rattling round in his brain right now, he couldn't even look at the client chair.

Lady Smallwood sat down. Sherlock resumed his own chair. The rooms remained dark, save for the light that fell from the street through the curtains, patterning Lady Elizabeth with light and shadow as if she were the woman in a Hitchcock film.

"May I infer from your...costume," Lady Smallwood began, "that you have brought me something?"

Sherlock watched her narrowly.

"Yes and no," he said. "That is...I do have some new intelligence regarding my brother's death. But I cannot believe, Lady Smallwood, that it could possibly be news to you."

"Tell me all the same," she said, in a low voice.

"I have every reason to believe," Sherlock went on, "that he was assassinated by an operative working on behalf of the Abandoned Girls' Reclamation Academy, otherwise known as AGRA."

Lady Smallwood drew herself more erect in her chair. She lifted her veil with both hands. The gravity of her expression gave one pause, even when only half-seen in half-light.

"You've always known," Sherlock said.

A gentle sigh escaped Lady Smallwood, but it did not relax her posture one iota. "Always."

"You might have told me."

The fatigue he had been fighting off ever since the back of that limousine soaked Sherlock to the bone as he listened to the ironic echoes. All the things he had never told John. Perhaps the fates had ordained this as his punishment for them. Though the fates might have chosen an instrument other than Rachel. It was scarcely fair. None of this was her fault. She had not asked to be born.

"Mycroft's last instructions to me were to keep you alive," said Lady Smallwood. "I knew that you could either take on AGRA, or stay alive. I made the choice Mycroft would have made."

"I have no doubt that you did."

She was hurt by his tone, of course. "May I ask how you know about AGRA?" she said.

Sherlock twisted in his chair, searching for a comfortable position. But comfort, it seemed, was to be denied him, now and for the rest of his natural life.

"Mary has abducted Rachel," Sherlock said. "We believe she has taken Rachel to AGRA headquarters."

 Lady Smallwood drew back into the recess of the chair, where he could not see her facial expression.

"Oh, Sherlock," she said in what was almost a groan. "I am sorry."

Sherlock took a difficult breath.

"Lady Smallwood," Sherlock began. "I need--"

She cut him off. "I can't--"

"I need your help," Sherlock insisted. "Mycroft must have had _some_ knowledge of AGRA and he must have passed  _some_ of it on to you. I don't know where this 'hub' of theirs is, I don't know how big it is, how many people will be in it and how many of them will be armed--"

"Stop this right now," Lady Smallwood commanded. "What you are contemplating is completely mad and has absolutely no chance of success."

"Not if I go in blind," Sherlock said. "But with the information that you and Mycroft must have about--"

"You are not  _listening_ to me!"

Scenes like this made Sherlock long passionately for the old days before he had learned how to hear feelings. Back when the pain and anger of other people used to simply roll off him, without bothering or even touching him. When he looked back at his youth he imagined himself coated with glaze, an impermeable glassy barrier that kept him dry, no matter deeply he might wade into the sea of sentiment in which the whole world was awash. Then John had turned up at Bart's looking for a flatmate and Sherlock had become interested in understanding how he worked, because it was not at first entirely obvious. And then the years flew by and now there were nights Sherlock slipped out of bed and stood in the sitting room staring at the skull on the mantelpiece and just aching with bewilderment. How had this happened to him? How had he acquired these two people in whom his whole heart now resided? What convulsion of the cosmos had produced the particular quantum reality in which his chest was tightening with every breath for fear that he might be forever deprived of the companionship of a nine-year-old girl of whose existence he by rights ought to be blissfully unaware?

"I lost the two men I loved most in the world to AGRA. I will lose nothing and no one else to them."

Sherlock's brain took the hint Lady Smallwood had provided and ran cheerfully along the track, despite what was happening to his heart, lungs, and intestines at the moment.

"I assume," Sherlock said, "that one of those men was my brother, and that the other was your husband. Inference: that Magnussen exposed your husband using information supplied to him by AGRA."

Lady Smallwood's expression became more obscure than ever.

"In fact," Sherlock went on, "Magnussen's belief that he alone had his fingers on all of those levers for moving the world was a delusion, assiduously encouraged in him by the AGRA operatives who were anonymously and pseudonymously providing him with his information."

"And MI6," Lady Smallwood bit off. "They both used him, when it was time to take down someone who was in the way. AGRA and MI6 collaborate, officially. In theory, they are complementary branches of the same secret service. In practice, they hate each other, undermine each other when they can, and are constantly trying to outmaneuver each other and claim the favors and the cash of the sitting government. AGRA's always got the worst end of the stick because it's entirely illegal, and therefore ninety five percent of the people in Parliament don't know of its existence." 

"But that's changing now," Sherlock said.

Lady Smallwood sighed.

"AGRA is Selkirk's army," she said.

The rest did not need to be said. Mycroft had tolerated Magnussen because of his usefulness to MI6. But Mycroft had stopped MI6 from moving against Lady Smallwood and her inquiry. AGRA had stepped in to provide the information necessary to blackmail Lady Smallwood, and to expose her husband. On that memorable Christmas Eve by Sherlock's hospital bed, Mycroft had declared his desire for vengeance against the man who had hurt his lady love. But Mycroft would have known that Magnussen was only the tool. He would have begun, slowly and in ways that nobody else had the wit to recognize, the subtle and complex process of neutralizing AGRA. And AGRA, which had been targeting Mycroft for years without success, would have realized that the only way they were going to catch a fish as slippery as Mycroft would be to deprive him of his water. Probably they had been grooming Selkirk for years before the disastrous election that put him and his party in. 

And probably there had been more or less continuous attempts to entrap Mycroft. Mary being one of them. And Mycroft eluded them all. In the end, there was nothing for it but to send in a woman in black to do it the easy way: point and shoot. And don't worry about the investigation, because Selkirk's in charge now.

Sherlock felt an odd pride thinking about it. None of their plots had worked on Mycroft. They hadn't conned him, trapped him, or betrayed him. They could not penetrate Mycroft's mind. In the end, all they could do was blow out his brains.

"Elizabeth," Sherlock said. He leaned forward, hoping she might be softened by the look on his face, which he was sure was seven shades of pathetic. "I know what this has already cost you. I'm not asking you to go up against them again. All I ask is that you give me what I need to do it myself."

Lady Smallwood leaned forward too. And she was most certainly not softened.

"You cannot succeed," she said. "The best you can do is get yourself and John and whoever is mad enough to help you killed. I cannot stop you from bringing everyone you love along on your ride to certain death but I  _will not assist you._ "

A kind of panic seized Sherlock which reminded him sharply and painfully of the moment he heard of Mycroft's death. It was, for some moments, difficult to breathe. Sherlock had promised John that they would find Rachel and bring her back. John believed him. John always believed him. Believing in himself as much as John believed in him had always been a painful and impossible business. But Sherlock had found the information and he had made his calls and sent his texts and formulated his plan and he had come at last, by the time the plane touched down, to believe without question that yes, they would find her, and soon. But the plan had depended on Lady Smallwood's cooperation. Of all the things that could go wrong with this plan, it had never once crossed his mind that the woman who had won Mycroft's impossible heart--the woman who had been inconsolable to the point of madness in the weeks after Mycroft's death--the woman who had gone into mourning for him--the woman who had continued, every year after Mycroft's death, to send to Rachel on her birthday a stuffed bear with love and hugs from her uncle Mycroft--would refuse him her help.

"And what about Rachel?" Sherlock cried, in a voice that he himself found quite alarmingly raw. 

"She is already lost," Lady Smallwood said. Her chin was quivering as she said it. 

"I do not accept that!" Sherlock shouted. "And I am  _astonished_ that  _you_ can accept it! That you could imagine that anyone who shared Mycroft's DNA could be such a--a--a  _coward--"_

"Your brother did not believe in lost causes!" Lady Smallwood was on her feet now, and so was he. "He knew when to let something go."

"He never let  _you_ go!"

Sherlock did not like this. No. He did not like anything about this. He did not like how his voice sounded or how his throat felt or how the sweat was beading along his hairline or how his legs were starting to tremble or how Lady Smallwood was staring at him as if he had just punched her in the solar plexus.

"No," Lady Smallwood said. "He sacrificed himself for me. I didn't ask him to do it. I didn't want him to do it. I wish he had let me go. He would still be alive."

The phrase  _with every fibre of my being_ suddenly made intuitive sense to Sherlock in a way that it never had before. She was wrong. That thing she had said was wrong. With every fibre of his being he knew it. You love someone, you never let go. Never let go. Death is less important than that.

"He could not have lived with that," Sherlock said, trying to get his breathing under control. "And neither can I. I cannot allow my own child--"

"You know, she's not  _your_ child," Lady Smallwood said.

 _Oh God,_ said a tiny voice in Sherlock's head. _This is what it's like. This is what it's like, just before you kill someone._  

It took some time for him to withdraw, slowly and carefully, from that moment, while Lady Smallwood's eyelids reddened at the rims.

"Get out," he said. 

"Sherlock--"

"Get out," he repeated.

"I only meant in the sense of--"

"Get out before I drive you out."

Tears spilled out of Lady Smallwood's watering eyes. 

"Don't leave it this way," she said.

"I will never speak with you again."

Lady Smallwood's gaze dropped. She turned to walk past him toward the door. And in a moment, she was gone.

The sitting room of the upstairs flat at 221B Baker Street had stood up to its share of abuse. But there was more damage done to it in the seventy-five seconds following Lady Smallwood's exit than in the previous twenty years. She was gone. She would not help. There was no one to help. Sherlock had to get into a highly defended secret subterranean military installation and find a nine-year-old child and get her back out of it without prompting anyone in the facility to kill her or John or, one hoped, himself. He could not do it without help. He could not do it. He would have to go downstairs and tell that man that Rachel was lost and there was nothing they could do about it. And it would kill John. It would kill them both. He could not do that. He could not witness what that would do to John. He did not think he could literally say the words. But what could he do? He could not do this without help.

Sherlock had the skull in his hand and was looking for somewhere to hurl it when he heard the door open.

John was standing there, in his dirty and torn FedEx uniform, with his mobile in one hand. He looked at Sherlock. He looked at the carnage behind Sherlock.

"So," John said. "That went swimmingly."

Sherlock was aware that John expected some sort of laugh at this moment. But there was nothing left inside Sherlock, not even air.

John held up one hand, with his phone in it, facing out.

"It's Greg," John said. "They think they've found something."

Sherlock blinked.

"Found something?" Sherlock repeated.

"They're out there on the downs right now. Greg and Molly and Janine and Sally even. They've been using the tracer. And they think they've found something."

It was curious how Sherlock didn't notice all the moments when John was coming toward him. Just the one where he found himself held.

"We're closer," John murmured, into Sherlock's ear. "It's all right. We're getting closer all the time."

Something about the way John's arms felt, tight but trembling, told Sherlock something John hadn't said.

"They've found Harry," Sherlock said, putting one hand around the back of John's head, as if he could somehow soften the blow.

"Her blood," John said. "Not her."

But, John's body informed him, as good as. Sherlock's breath shuddered a bit.

"Let's not," John said, with his lips against the side of Sherlock's neck. "Let's just not. Let's pretend she's alive and well and kicking everyone's arse. Let's just imagine that until there's time for...for this."

Sherlock nodded.

"All right." John gave him a couple of brisk taps on the shoulder, as if they had merely been having a businesslike chat. "Hit the ground running. That's what we do. Get the old laptop out of the cupboard and let's go."

*   *   *   *

**8:20pm**

**HAMPSTEAD HEATH**

Lady Elizabeth Smallwood stepped out of the tree cover. She went far enough away that nobody concealed there could overhear, but not so far that she couldn't run for the trees if something emerged. She removed from her purse a small red burner phone, flipped it open, and pressed it to her ear. 

A moment, and then the voice on the other end. 

"Anthea," the voice said.

Lady Smallwood snuffled her tears back discreetly before replying.

"It's Amidala," Lady Smallwood said. "We have a problem."

END CHAPTER.


	17. IT TAKES A VILLAGE

A pub. Somehow, to John, it seemed like a miracle that pubs still existed. That you could just walk among people at a tourist trap in the middle of Brighton and nobody burst out of the crowd waving nunchucks or tried to garotte you as you pushed your way through the heavy oak door. It felt not unlike coming back from Afghanistan. All this has just been here, just going on the way it always does. And you went to another universe; and now, the old one looked like the set of a period film. Pub, Circa Before The Abduction.

John glanced at Sherlock, who was searching out details in the distance while blundering about with his usual disregard for the boundaries of other people. John wondered whether Sherlock noticed the difference between The War and civilian life. Maybe to Sherlock there was no difference. 

“Stetson!”

The name of course was an alias; but the voice was so familiar to John that it was an effort to swallow the lump forming in his throat. Greg Lestrade was sitting on one of the leather benches in the corner. He got up, blathering something about the good old days back in Narcotics and how nice it was to have this chance to catch up seeing as they were all on holiday, and ushered both of them across the crowded room. They found a staircase on the opposite side, up which Greg more or less shoved them. On the second level, there were three rooms evidently reserved for private parties. Greg led them past the noisiest stag night in Britain, round the entrance to a moribund retirement party, and finally into a small, dark-paneled room with a large rectangular oak table in the center of it. The chairs had all been pushed back, and a power cable snaked in from somewhere down the hall, to which had been attached a power strip, from which sprouted a whole octopus of electrical cords.

“Oh, Sherlock!”

That was Janine, running over to give Sherlock a hug for which he braced himself with a certain amount of apprehension. She had hardly aged at all, physically. From the neck down you would think she was immortal. But her face, when John saw it over Sherlock’s shoulder, was startling. He’d followed the news of her breakdown, of course. But he’d never seen the evidence on her face before. It was…recognizable, in a way it had not been before. She too had been through the war.

Sally Donovan looked on ironically from her corner. She had both hands planted on the table and was leaning over it, lit up by the bluish glow of the computer screens. Molly stood at the opposite corner, where the portable microscope and Bunsen burner had been set up.

“How…why are they letting you do all this?” John said.

Molly smiled. “Janine’s been in here quite often over the years.”

“And I tip _very_ well,” Janine said.

“Now,” Greg said, clapping his hands and rubbing them a bit with satisfaction. “We found Harry’s bike but no Harry. Nor did we find Harry’s car. Which is odd given that there were once tire tracks leading _to_ that stone wall, and none leading away from it.”

“What do you mean, were once?” Sherlock demanded.

“Someone had covered them up,” Molly said. "Just by looking you can’t see anything’s wrong; but get down on your hands and knees and you see they took all the divots and replaced them. So we found the car tracks and the bike tracks, once we started looking.”

"There was some charred material on top of the dirt around the tree trunks," Greg put in. "But Molly’s been testing it and she says it’s not human remains.”

Something hurt inside John so suddenly that he had to sit down. Greg saw, but didn’t comment on it. Molly reached into a petri dish with a pair of tweezers and held up a charred scrap of faded gray leather.

“Elfanant,” Sherlock murmured.

“I’m afraid so,” Molly said, with touching gravity. “We also found this.” She lifted up a dirty and scorch-marked silver box about the side of a thumbnail, from which bits and pieces of wires in various crazy colors depended. “This is the illegally modified microprocessor of Rachel’s tablet, correct?”

Sherlock nodded. Donovan gave him a sideways glare.

“Sally’s hypothesis is that while disposing of…of the evidence,” Molly said, glancing nervously at John, “they took the opportunity to search Rachel’s case and dispose of anything they didn’t want entering the AGRA environment, which would include wonky electronics.”

“Rachel would have been doing what during all this?” John said, bitterly.

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

Then Donovan said, “This is not a straightforward kidnapping, John. Rachel was made to believe that she was going with Mary of her own free will. They wouldn’t want to risk openly antagonizing her until after they’d reached their own turf. I don’t know where Rachel was when they were murdering her aunt and burning her most prized possessions, but I do know she would have been somewhere else. She can’t have witnessed it. They’d have had to know she would have withdrawn her cooperation immediately.”

“Agreed,” Sherlock said, briefly looking at John.

John closed his eyes and nodded.

Withdrawn her cooperation.

Rachel’s cooperation had been secured in advance. Sherlock had deduced that from the start. It had taken John longer to accept it. But there it was. You couldn’t have abducted Rachel in broad daylight under the noses of the Priory School security staff _unless_ you had her cooperation. The hell she would have raised…

“I don’t think they could have known Elfanant was a tracking device,” Molly resumed. “More likely, they identified it as a health hazard. I mean it is--was--filthy, and the smell was quite noticeable.”

“Smells,” Sherlock put in. “There are seventeen distinctive odors—“

“However,” Molly pressed on, “given that Rachel is bound to discover its loss, the fact that they took the risk of destroying it suggests a real concern about biocontaminants. Now that indicates that this…place…we’re looking for is most likely a contained environment dependent on an artificial and largely recycled air supply. Under those conditions any contagion that became airborne would go pandemic very quickly. So what Adela told you would appear to be right, as far as it went. It’s either underwater—“

“Underwater lairs are strictly for James Bond films,” Sherlock put in. “The cost of construction alone rules them out in any real-word scenario.”

 “—or it’s underground,” Donovan finished.

“And therefore unusually vulnerable,” Sherlock said. “Relatively easy to seal off or poison or flood. They rely on secrecy and terror to prevent anyone from _discovering_ the place, but once discovered…”

Sherlock gazed at the screen in silence for a moment. He turned and began walking round the table, muttering to himself. Molly left Sherlock to it and turned to John.

“With Elfanant gone, the tracer couldn’t get us much farther,” Molly resumed. “It sort of gave up while we were in the middle of this green field, and then it was Greg who noticed the hoofprints.”

Sherlock’s ears almost literally perked up. He wheeled around and made a beeline back to the computer screens.

“Show me,” he said.

Janine began pulling up the photos on her notebook. She pointed at two rows of what looked like hoofprints, spaced four or five feet apart, which ran across the turf in curving, but perfectly parallel lines.

Sherlock’s face swam closer to the notebook screen. He was bent over Janine’s shoulder now, one arm reaching past her to point at the screen. She’s got him just where she wants him, John thought. And then he thought, _Christ, John, it’s been ten years and she’s trying to help you find Rachel. Be the better man._

That was something his father used to say to him. John was alarmed to find that there were still a few echoes of his father’s voice drifting around in there. He had truly done his best to purge everything.

“That’s how they moved the car,” Sherlock murmured. "And the motorcycle."

Lestrade and Donovan gave each other a kind of world-weary look.

“That’s what we…well, what we deduced,” Lestrade said, managing to sound both truculent and apologetic. The look Donovan accompanied this with was purely truculent. “It’s obviously not horses, look how perfectly they’re matched. Parallel tracks made by a two- or four-wheeled vehicle, I’d have said. Only for some reason it’s horseshoes and not tires.”

“You know what they remind me of,” John piped up, as his brain come back to life.

Sherlock was about to cut him off and deliver the answer; but instead, with a tender regard for his feelings which John found almost unbearably touching, he said, “Good man! What do they remind you of?”

It wasn’t Sherlock's fault he couldn’t quite mask the note of condescension, even when he was sincerely trying.

“Tank treads,” John said.

Sherlock nodded in vigorous agreement. “They’ve engineered an overland vehicle with wide, flat treads which won’t dig grooves in the precious South Downs turf, which is vigilantly defended by a dwindling but wholly committed and quite ingenious band of local heritage enthusiasts. They daren’t call that kind of attention to themselves, but they do need traction, so instead of the familiar chevron shape they have incorporated raised ridges that look like horses’ hooves. On such elastic and close-knit turf the impressions don’t last long; and if someone does chance to observe them, they will appear to be those of a pair of horses which…”

Sherlock trailed off as a new thought occurred to him. Lestrade bounded in like a puppy.

“Yes! That’s what we said, Sally and I. There must be _some_ farm or stable or something in the vicinity where they keep horses, to explain the tracks. If the same place has a barn big enough to store the vehicle and some kind of cellar or something that could mask the entrance to an underground shaft of some size…”

“Then the balance of probability indicates that we’ve found our secret lair,” Donovan finished, shaking back her hair and fixing Sherlock with a challenging stare.

Before Sherlock could respond, Molly let out a tiny cough, and indicated with a subtle nod the images that Janine was pulling up on the screen.

John found, somewhere, the energy it took to get up and crowd around the screen. It looked like a collage of photos, taken by cameraphones in very low light. Nevertheless, John could make out the hulk of a large gray weatherbeaten barn, two horses tethered in a fenced-in green yard, munching turf; and about a dozen sheep being driven into an adjoining pen by someone in a green cap and bulky canvas jacket. She was nearly six feet tall and wearing Wellington boots, but still recognizable as a woman.

“A greenhouse,” Sherlock breathed.

John had missed that. But in one of the photos, he could now see fiery light reflecting off the panes of a sloping roof of a good-sized greenhouse.

“Deduction being…they grow plants?” John hazarded.

Sherlock shook his head. “The glass is translucent but not transparent. You can’t _see_ into it, but it would—for an underground lair—function as a kind of skylight. Natural light would come in, pass through whatever transparent barrier or cap they use to cover the top of the shaft, and down into the lair, where it would go a long way toward preventing the outbreaks of depression and homicidal mania that they would otherwise be sure to have in the complete absence of natural light.”

Lestrade pointed at the greenhouse. “Clever system,” he said. “But Sally thought, well, just _one_ of these skylight things would not go very far, there must be others. And then—and this I thought was the most brilliant bit—she said—“

“I said,” Donovan cut in, “that this is a women’s organization. MI6’s ladies’ auxiliary, if you will. The women’s orgs never get anything _first_. They get by on the scraps and leavings and hand-me-downs. Nobody would put the money into building them a _new_ operational base from scratch. They must have modified an existing facility.”

“And voila!” Greg shouted, waving one hand at a newly-sprouted image with unusual flair and flamboyance. “The Devil’s Dyke Depository!”

“The _what_?” John demanded, as the screen resolved into a scan of a nearly-disintegrating typed memo.

“It was proposed in Parliament in 1954,” Greg said, eagerly. “There was a plan to build a whole nuclear shelter under the Downs, where the government and the military leaders and…and…you know, secret things…could take shelter in case the Soviets dropped the big one.”

“Because of course if there _was_ a nuclear engagement with the Soviets, taking out England would be their _first_ priority,” John snapped.

“Well, that’s why Parliament voted it down,” Greg admitted. “That and chalk turns out not to be the best protection there is against nuclear radiation, though it is of course very easy to carve tunnels into. But the thing is—apparently—at least according to local history—which is, you know, not widely accepted because it’s mostly written by lunatics—the government actually built the thing anyway. You know, without telling Parliament.”

“That’d be the MI6 way,” John said. “We know what’s best for you, and the law of the land can bloody well bugger off.”

“Succinctly put, John,” Sherlock replied.

“Course there are conflicting ideas about exactly where they built it and…well…” Greg grimaced. “You don’t want to sort through the forums dedicated to this question, Sherlock, it’s like watching all ten seasons of the X-Files at once. But as Sally deduced—we don’t have to!”

Janine gave a smart tap to one of the keys, and pushed back from the screen, presenting it to them as if she were a magician’s assistant.

On the screen was an aerial view of green hills sloping down toward a long trough that snaked between them. Dotted about on them were various stands of trees, farmhouses, outbuildings, all reduced to tiny size. Molly got out a laser pointer, for God’s sake, and began flashing it about.

And John’s eyes followed the little red dancing point, and saw it pick out six little metallic glints, spaced out along both sides of the trough between the hills at _nearly_ regular intervals, three on each side, describing a somewhat irregular hexagon.

"Grabbed it off some American's flickr," Greg said. "Taken by a tourist on one of those recreational small-plane trips."

Sherlock, who had been leaning over with his hands braced against the table, pushed himself abruptly back, snapping bolt upright.

“You’ve found it,” Sherlock said.

The tone of Sherlock’s words was so strange—even to John—that for a moment nobody said anything. They were all afraid of whatever new thing was trembling in that voice, and in his outstretched hand.

“You found it all on your own,” Sherlock murmured, barely audibly.

It was Greg who finally broke the paralyzed silence, and clapped a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“You trained us well, Sherlock,” he said.

John’s heart had been pretty well battered that day. But it still retained one unbruised nerve capable of throbbing at the sight of Sherlock Holmes blinking back tears as he stared in bewilderment at the people gathered around the table. The decent, steady, generous man whose intelligence Sherlock routinely insulted and whose given name Sherlock couldn’t be bothered to learn. The woman to whose tender feelings for him Sherlock had once administered a humiliating shock that still made John wince whenever he thought about it. The woman Sherlock had pretended to love, lied to, and proposed to, purely in order to bring down Charles Augustus Magnussen. The hardworking police officer who Sherlock had always found ways of punishing for the unforgivable crime of failing to prostrate herself before his genius.

“You did this for Rachel,” Sherlock said, in that strange new tone.

“Yeah, _basically_ ,” said Greg, pulling out a chair and just about pushing Sherlock into it. “And for John. And, you know, maybe, maybe just a _tiny_ bit...”

“For you,” Donovan finished. "Freak."

 The laugh that broke out from everyone assembled crashed like a wave, washing away all the strain. And as the waters drew back into the sea of despair, John saw hope flashing out in spangles all around him, from the screens of the computers and Molly’s test tubes and Sherlock’s diamond-hard glittering eyes.

“Well,” Sherlock said, pulling his chair in toward the table. “The rest is elementary. " 

END CHAPTER


	18. TURF

**DEVIL’S DYKE ORGANIC FARMS,** **SOUTH DOWNS NATIONAL PARK**

Thank God for the full moon.

In London, of course, it never mattered. But in the middle of South Downs National Park, John was realizing, it mattered quite a bit. On the one hand, John and Sherlock would be more visible as they skulked around the perimeter of Devil’s Dyke Organic farms. On the other hand, when they halted in a spot of tree cover just outside the farm’s boundary fence, they could very _nearly_ see their target.

John preferred for the moment to watch Sherlock, lying belly down and arse up in the bracken, quivering with anticipation as he surveyed the farmhouse through the night vision goggles. They had provided themselves with basic black during their stop at the flat, but from this distance Sherlock’s contours were visible (or at least imaginable) all the same. The farmhouse was some distance away—the fence seemed to mark off about forty acres—but situated at the top of a small rise, and therefore visible enough. The greenhouse was less easy to spot, but it gleamed almost in the exact center of the property. The huge gray barn squatted some distance away from both of them.

Sherlock motioned for John to lie down next to him. Suppressing a grumble, John lowered himself into position. He had always loathed doing this while he was in the army, and having Sherlock’s flank pressing up against his was only a partial compensation for the crick in his neck.

Sherlock put a hand to his ear, pressing in the Bluetooth earpiece for a moment. They had only been able to scare up three earpieces—one for each team. Well, one for each team and one for Assistant Commissioner Sally “Lone Wolf” Donovan.

“They’re still getting into position,” Sherlock whispered. “Better have a look at what you’re dealing with.”

Sherlock passed John the night goggles. There was only one pair. Lestrade had paid an enormous sum for them years ago when he went out on his own—after which they had lain more or less unused in his glove compartment. Molly was pleased they were getting an airing. Lestrade was not happy about the fact that it was Sherlock airing them.  

John put them on. He felt the familiar sensation of being immersed in a murky pond in which whatever light did penetrate was stained algae-green. After a few moments he began to distinguish the different shades, and a new and enlarged picture of the farm rippled into view.

The green made the farm buildings seem even more run-down that they actually were—moss-covered and sunken like an ancient shipwreck. The horses were no longer in the yard; they were probably in stalls in the barn now. Inside the white-fenced pen, John could still see moonlight lightening the backs of a dozen large oblong boulders.

A more careful inspection of these boulders revealed them to be sheep. They had hunkered down on the dark-green ground, folding their legs under and stretching out their mint-colored necks. There was a group of three sleeping with their heads resting on each other’s bodies. They might have been stands of brain coral in a kind of octopus’s garden.

Sherlock leaned over to whisper, barely audibly, into John’s ear.

“Note that the sheep are penned up,” Sherlock murmured. “Despite it being a warm and fine spring night, and despite the fact that there are approximately forty acres of pasture available to them. No doubt you apprehend the crucial significant of this fact.”

“Sherlock,” John hissed. “I don’t think we have time to burn squeezing fifty useless deductions out of a pile of sleeping sheep.”

“Heap,” Sherlock whispered back.

“What?”

“If you’d thought to use ‘heap’ instead of ‘pile’ you could have had a triple rhyme for maximum hilarity. Heap of sleeping sheep. Details, John.”

“I swear to God, Sherlock—“

“Well that is what you were striving for, isn’t it?” Sherlock whispered. “To ridicule me for bothering about something which to your untutored eye appears irretrievably silly?”

John reminded himself that Sherlock recovering the capacity to enjoy his work was a _good_ thing.

“To put it another way, Sherlock, no. I do not apprehend the crucial significance of the fact that there are sheep sleeping, at night, inside an enclosure which was obviously designed to hold them.”

“Sheep are not people, John,” Sherlock murmured, moving in a bit closer to that his moving lips grazed the edges of John’s ear. “Though most people are in fact sheep. They don’t need to be tucked in at night. Ordinarily, unless the weather is severe, sheep sleep out on the hills wherever, as the great Johannes Bach tells us, they may safely graze. The flock is quite small and it would be no trouble to gather them together whenever it was required.”

John paused a moment.

“No,” he whispered. “It’s still eluding me, the crucial significance.”

“Why don’t they let the sheep graze at will? That’s what made the South Down turf in the first place, and this farm of theirs, though it _is_ a front, is meant to be keeping up local tradition.”

“What, is the grass weaponized or something?”

“Slightly warmer,” Sherlock murmured. “I have two more realistic and fruitful hypotheses. One: the sheep are kept in the pen because if they were allowed to roam the farm, they might set off the pressure-sensitive trigger pads which are concealed beneath this turf.”

“What pressure-sensitive—“

“Surely you noticed that pattern of slightly brighter-green spots on the otherwise soothingly monochromatic turf inside the perimeter fence.”

“No,” John said. “Even now I—“

“One moment.” Sherlock pushed a button on the side of the goggles. “Try again with infrared sensitivity turned on.”

John stared his hardest.

“Still can’t see them, Sherlock.”

“Well, the color difference exists, John. Perhaps you should have your eyes examined after the mission is over. It might be time for progressive lenses, your arm configuration when you read the paper has been extending laterally by--”

“Shut up, Sherlock.”

“The pads are wired to a power source and that produces the slight emission of heat which translates into the subtle color difference which you are lamentably unable to perceive. The sheep would also be unable to perceive it, and could be trusted to trigger the alarms on an earsplittingly regular basis. The sheep are kept in the pen during the night because that is when the alarm is armed.”

“Ah,” John said. “So…we…use the night goggles to pick our way past the pressure sensors…”

“But,” Sherlock interrupted. “If you turn on the magnifiers you will see that the entire greenhouse is wired up. The barn doors are locked with what appears to be a simple padlock and chain, and yet the bright glow outlining the edges of the double doors is suggestive of electric eyes and the beams into which they gaze. As for the farmhouse, I have no doubt that it is crammed with state of the art security equipment. I will do my dexterous best, but the odds of our triggering an alarm and alerting the women of Devil’s Dyke farms to our presence here seem uncomfortably high. So. What’s our approach?”

“We startle the sheep, they break out of the pen and set off the pressure alarms, and while pandemonium reigns at Devil’s Dyke Organic Farms, you and I begin breaking into AGRA while Greg, Janine, and Molly execute Stage 2.”

“Correct,” Sherlock said. “Lestrade informs me that he is right now cutting a hole in the perimeter fence, which is _not_ electrified _or_ alarmed because in 1995 the next farm over nearly took them to court after their beagle blundered up against the fence and received the shock of its life. Once the pen is opened, the sheep will be loose in the park. The staff of Devil’s Dyke Organic Farms will be highly motivated to retrieve them, as any further embroilment with their litigious neighbors is potentially disastrous. They will emerge from their domicile and give chase, leaving us a clear field.”

“Brilliant,” John said.

“Thank you. Give me the glasses.”

While John struggled to get them off, he said, “What’s your second hypothesis?”

Sherlock reached out to take the glasses. “What?”

“You said you had two.”

“Oh.” Sherlock strapped the contraption onto his head, turning himself instantly into a half-man, half-fly space alien. “The second one is that the turf on which those sheep are sleeping covers something that the women of Devil’s Dyke Organics particularly desire to conceal.”

“Such as?” John pressed.

“An emergency exit, perhaps,” Sherlock said. “Or nothing. I don’t think I would bet the rent money on hypothesis number two, John; but it’s worth exploring, if the opportunity arises.”

Sherlock touched the earpiece again.

“Hotel Whiskey in position. Confirm readiness, Golf Mike Juliet.”

“Jesus, Sherlock, I think you could use first names.”

“Careless talk costs lives, John.”

“So you always say.”

Sherlock wasn’t listening. His eyes were focused on the perimeter fence.

“Roger, Golf Mike Juliet," Sherlock murmured. "Hotel Whiskey on the move.”

Sherlock tapped John. He pushed himself into a crouch. They left the tree cover together, spidering over the darkened slope, crawling under the barbed wire, onto the treacherous turf of Devil’s Dyke Organic Farms.

*    *    *   *

**AGRA**

**INNER OFFICE RING**

Anthea Guinivere was having a bad day.

This particular bad day had begun several years earlier and she had been experiencing it more or less continuously since then; but there were occasional flare-ups during which her low level of grinding rage sharpened into a particularly agonizing spike. The moment she saw Agnes Grace carrying the limp form of her unconscious daughter through the inner doors of Portal Three, the kettle that was always seething on Anthea’s back burner came to a boil. When, in return for the valuable services she had rendered during Castorfall 2.0, Sir offered Anthea a position at the hub, Anthea had stipulated that it could not under any circumstances involve working with the children. The AGRA children were volatile, alien, unpredictable creatures who would eat you as soon as look at you. Anthea had been exactly the same way when she was an AGRA child. Just seeing Agnes holding that little red-headed girl as if she were made of precious stones brought on the beginning of a tension headache which only worsened as time went on. Now Amidala, who Anthea had always counted on as an exceptionally sensible and intelligent colleague, had used one of her few remaining lifelines to tell her about something that from Anthea’s point of view was not even an emergency. True, they had neither wished for nor planned for Sherlock and John to start scouring the country in search of the hub. If it had been up to either of them, Operation Pamina would never have been approved at all. But Anthea could see several ways in which this development could be turned to their advantage. Amidala disagreed. Well, Amidala had many qualities one was forced to admire; but you’d only to look at the name she’d chosen to know she wasn’t approaching the work with the proper attitude.

Anthea glanced up from her desk at the screen on the curved wall opposite, reminding herself that continuous maintenance of the AGRA Affect was the best life insurance any of them had. She waved a hand over the interactive portion of her desktop surface and began playing the keys. She scanned each visual quickly as it appeared, often moving to tap it out of the way before all the pixels were fully in place. She lingered for a moment on the MRC in which Agnes was still ‘interrogating’ Harriet Watson.

Oh Agnes. What a tragic waste of resources. Sir must have had his reasons for choosing Agnes as the agent for Castorfall 1.0, but Anthea had never understood them. Agnes’s marksmanship was beyond reproach, her kill rate was outstanding, her people skills were excellent, and her loyalty to AGRA was extraordinary. But she lacked fluidity. Or rather—and to be fair, this happened to most operatives who lived into their thirties—her fluidity had decreased over time. Ever since the Magnussen kill had brought her back to the fold, Agnes’s fluidity had been drying up. She was obsessed with the Mary Morstan persona, and within a hair’s-breadth of becoming fixed. And yet there had been no corresponding decrease in Agnes’s volatility, fragility, or instability. Why Sir continued to trust her was a mystery.

Anthea’s hand halted in the air. Something was wrong with the new image on the screen.

After a moment’s scrutiny, Anthea identified the source as the camera mounted in the hallway outside the entrance portals to the Admin Level 4 private apartments. It was mechanically sweeping the doors as it always did, continuing its leisurely search for something amiss. And on each sweep, it passed a gigantic, gaping, torn-edged, plaster-dusted, debris-surrounded hole near the base of the door to AL4Om2. Anthea looked the number up to be certain; but of course that was Agnes’s front door. It could hardly be otherwise. And of course that hole had been punched out from the inside by a holy terror of nine years old who was now loose in the complex.

Anthea stopped surfing and turned on audio for that location.

Yes. There was an alarm going off. But it was not an intruder alert alarm, or a containment breach warning, or an unauthorized entry notification. It was the sodding smoke detector. John Watson’s wretched child had not in fact tampered with the actual entrance to the corridor, which would of course have set off all of those alarms. She had instead created so much dust by bashing that hole in the drywall that its particles fluttered through the air and triggered the smoke detector, which was so bloody sensitive you could set it off just by boiling a kettle for tea with the door open. 

Still. Even though nobody paid any attention to the damn smoke alarms, you would expect that someone on that hallway would be annoyed enough to come out and investigate…

Anthea sighed. Of course. John Watson’s wretched child had chosen to make her move during Cultural Literacy. Less formally known as Flicks & Picks, Cultural Literacy took up the three hours between the conclusion of supper and bed check, and typically involved the screening of a recent film followed by an hour of analysis led by the instructors. Above Admin Level 2 you were excused from daily CL; but today they happened to be showing _Avengers: Age of Ultron_ , which had been a fan favorite among young and old alike since its release. It was the kind of film that benefited from a big screen and surround sound. Everyone who didn’t have a duty post that night would be in the theater.

John Watson’s child was roaming free. And Agnes had no idea.

Well, someone had to rectify this situation before it came to the attention of Sir.  

Anthea keyed in her authorization code and signaled the all clear to the correct location. The alarm fell silent. Taking care not to heave a _second_ sigh, and preserving her enigmatic half-smile, Anthea checked the first location that came to mind.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck FUCK.

Smiling still, Anthea rose fluidly from her chair, turned round, and pressed her palm against the convex wall behind her desk.

“Anthea Guinivere Renata Allison,” she said.

Anthea lifted her hand as the wall beneath it began to move. It rotated just enough to open a narrow space by the wall, though which Anthea slipped.

Sir was on his feet in the center of the office. The admins who had been vouchsafed the privilege called Sir’s sanctum sanctorum the Not Actually Oval Office, or NAOO when texting. It was perfectly circular, and bounded all round by what seemed a solid wall of frosted glass that reached at least two stories up toward a perfectly circular disk of even thicker frosted glass. The entire surface of the interior wall, from floor to ceiling and in three hundred and sixty degrees, functioned as a computer screen, tied in to the processor and keyboard built into Sir’s curved mahogany desk. At the moment he was staring at a cascade of images with which Anthea, having already over-familiarized herself with them, was not particularly interested. From the rear, one might almost forget how old Sir was. His thighs and torso, while somewhat thickened by age, hadn’t been softened by it. The flesh was still solidly packed on the bones, the trousers still skimming it effortlessly and lovingly. Sir dressed like a civilian—like a civilian who was used to the best of everything and did not at all mind using taxpayers’ money to attain it—but his body was absolutely rigid, in obedience to some exacting and rigorous authority which Sir carried inside himself, the way a lantern carried a flame. He had begun shaving his head as soon as the first signs of balding appeared, compensating with a neat little goatee and mustache which he trimmed with murderous exactitude. At the moment, Anthea couldn’t see it, of course; just the back of his brown pinstriped suit jacked and trousers, his bootheels, and the large and strong hands he had placed on his hips as he studied the images on the wall.

“Yes, what is it?”

Sir didn’t turn around to address her. He sometimes didn’t. Anthea was not offended. It was a sign of trust.

“Sir, I’ve finished the receipts on Polluxfall, and I wondered if I might step out and join the end of Cultural Literacy.”

His head turned. She studied his profile. She was aware that objectively speaking he would still be considered handsome, though she personally could not find it in her to do so. The goatee, perhaps.

“What is it today?”

“ _Age of Ultron_ , sir. Avengers franchise. Circa 2015.”

“A bit beneath your intelligence, I should have thought.”

Anthea deepened her smile before replying.

“The film will be just coming to a close now, Sir. But I like to spot-check the discussions myself. To ensure continuity and consistency.”

This was true. Sir’s nod acknowledged that.

“Permission granted.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Not at all. You should ask for more time off. You work too hard, Anthea.”

Anthea nodded, smiling. “Thank you, Sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Anthea slipped through the aperture back into her own office. She keyed in the complex series of commands that opened the door on the far wall. She crossed the thick, beige, noise-eating carpet toward the door, fighting the urge to run.

*  *  *  *

**RACHEL’S BLOG, ENTRY NINE, CONTINUED**

Sometimes when I’m in the car with my dads and the traffic is bad Lolo will say he’s going to take a short cut and my Dad will say we are not doing any more of your short cuts Sherlock we still have three outstanding citations but before he finishes Lolo will have already turned the car around and then I play a game with myself called Lost, Late, or Lectured in which I try to predict the ultimate outcome. Late is the safest bet because it sort of includes Lost and Lectured which is cheating a bit, I realize now. The Lecture usually comes from a police officer though sometimes my Dad has to give it himself when the car winds up with its grille up against a chain link fence in an alley or something and my Dad says, “And once again the great Sherlock Holmes fails to remember that we are no longer traveling everywhere on foot.”

I’m reminded of that because Alex’s short cuts were sort of the same way. Long sets of twisty passages  going round and round and up and down and you couldn’t really tell if you were getting anywhere because it was all behind the walls. I saw a lot of the inside machinery though. It was interesting machinery. Big and old and with rivets the size of jar lids but all newly painted white which made them look futuristic somehow. Most of it was for the air supply but there were generators too of course which you could always spot because they were vented outside but there was still a faint whiff of petrol. And so many wires! Even Lolo wouldn’t have tried fooling around with them, there were so many and they went in so many directions. And Alex kept saying down here kid, are you OK, here let me go under this first and then I’ll pull you through. Sometimes she sounded kind of American which made sense because she was saying all these things you hear in American films. But then she would sound English again as soon as something unexpected happened.

And then there we were in this tiny space where even I couldn’t really stand upright, with this curved metal sheeting all round us, and Alex was on her hands and knees in front of me and peering at a hole in the bottom of the chamber.

“Here we are,” she said. “Our slide to freedom.”

She moved aside so I could crawl up and take a look. From the hole, there was a chute leading downwards at a forty-five degree angle. It was so steep I couldn’t see what was on the other end, though there was light coming up from it.

“It’s too narrow,” I said. “You won’t be able to get through.”

“That’s why I need you, kid,” Alex said. “You _can_ get through. Once you’re down there, there’s a red lever to pull that opens the emergency escape hatch. Pull the lever and this,” she said, banging with her knuckles on the ceiling, “blows open. There’ll be a rope coil down there—it’s basic emergency equipment—and you can throw me one end and I’ll haul you back up. And then you and I can crawl out through the hatch and into the big world.”

I looked up and the light was dim but I could see there was a kind of hinged metal lid right above us, cast-iron and round and certainly wide enough to admit Alex, though a well-fed adult might have been a bit of a tight squeeze.

“What’s on the other end of the chute?” I said.

“It’s an auxiliary control room,” Alex said. “This place has six different control stations. Each controls one sector. If someone seizes the first sector, say, people in the other five sectors can isolate it. Then people get into the conduit system and when they reach the right control station you can just slide right in and get the drop on whoever it is.”

I said, “That’s pretty cool.”

“Isn’t it?” Alex said. “It’d be such a fun place if they weren’t always _training_ you. God, the training, I don’t know how much of it you’ve been through but trust me you will come to hate it.”

I said, “I believe you.”

“All right then,” Alex said.

I looked at her face. Her eyes were big and serious and pleading all of a sudden.

“You won’t turn on me, Ariadne? Once you’re down there? You’ll pull the lever, and not just call someone and turn me in?”

I said, “Of course not!”

Alex was the first girl older than me who had ever paid me any attention at all, except in a bad way. She needed to get out as much as I did. I had never betrayed a friend, ever. Not that I had ever had many to betray. Some, when I was very little, before Uncle Mycroft died. But even then. You stood by your friends. My Dad believed in that. My Aunt Harriet believed in that. It was the Watson Way.

Alex lifted up one of her hands and patted mine. I looked at the two hands, her big one and my small one, against the gray metal of the conduit.

“Thanks, Ariadne,” Alex said. “Off you go then.”

I stretched out on my belly until my legs were dangling into the chute. My dads had always told me never to go head first.

I saw Alex’s mouth twist at one corner. Could have been a smile or she could have been about to cry.

“Good luck, Ariadne,” Alex said. “You’re a good kid.”

I looked up at her. I smiled. I said a thing I’d often heard my Aunt Harriet say, when she was at the wheel of her car and about to do something rash.

“GERONIMOOOOO!”

I let go.

*   *   *   *

**DEVIL’S DYKE ORGANIC FARMS**

**SHEEP PEN**

Lestrade’s unwelcome voice buzzed in Sherlock’s ear.

“Hotel Whiskey, what’s the hold-up?”

“It’s the sheep,” Sherlock hissed into the earpiece. “They’re not cooperating.”

All he heard on the other end was laughter.

“Keep quiet! This is not funny!”

“Understood," Lestrade said. "Sheep not funny. Roger that, Hotel Whiskey.”

Sherlock gritted his teeth. Lestrade was postponing further mockery for after the success of the mission, something for which Sherlock supposed he ought to be thankful. But it really was hardly fair. Sherlock and John had, thanks to good planning and good luck, reached the pen without triggering the sensors. They had climbed into the pen without triggering the sensors. Sherlock had bashed the latch off the gate to the pen so that the breakout would look like an inside job, and there was no indication that anyone in the farmhouse heard or noticed. It had gone so far without a hitch.

It was just that the sheep wouldn’t move.

Waking them up was hard enough. John had resorted to thwacking them smartly on the haunches with the butt of his revolver. This roused them into a standing position…where they stood, blinking sleepily at each other, apparently unconcerned by the presence of two strange humans in their pen.

“We should have brought a dog,” John whispered.

“I was planning to use _their_ dog,” Sherlock whispered back. “There was a dog in the photos on the farm’s website. Devil’s Dyke Organics, rooted in tradition. They did their best to make it look like it was run by a nice lesbian couple and their dog, which was unmistakeably a border collie. Our approach should have alerted that dog and yet I have not heard a single bark. What on earth can that dog be doing?”

“Nothing, apparently,” John whispered back.

Sherlock suppressed a shout of frustration. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The smell of damp wool and sheep excrement was extremely distracting. It was fortunately set off somewhat by the muskiness of the turf and the sweetness of the grass. The sheep might not appreciate their confinement, but the soil they were confined to was the richest on the farm. Perhaps that was why they were so indisposed to leave it.

He opened his eyes. The round eyes looking back at him belonged to a massive, grizzled ewe—a Southdown, naturally—whose moist nose was not even an inch from his own. She appeared to take the night vision goggles in stride. It would take the Apocalypse to get even the faintest hint of curiosity into this animal's gaze.

John crouched down next to Sherlock. Stowing his revolver safely away, he said, “I think she likes you. Have you got as far as names yet?”

“Well, John,” Sherlock said, quietly. “What a dog may do, a man may dare.”

The expression on John’s face made the coming humiliation almost worth it.

Sherlock glared right into the ewe’s face and barked.

The ewe started back. He got a brief glance at the whites of her eyes as she wheeled away and ran for the gate.

Sherlock began getting cautiously to his feet. Then a two-hundred-pound Southdown slammed into Sherlock’s hip and knocked him flat. The goggles went flying.

As Sherlock’s face hit the thankfully soft turf, he heard a wail like an air-raid siren from the direction of the farmhouse. The first of the pressure alarms must have gone off. He also heard the sound of the night vision goggles hitting the turf, and being trodden into tiny crunchy fragments by the hooves of rampaging sheep.

Sherlock tried looking up. All he could see was a whirling mess of sharp hooves and soft bellies, all thundering toward the gate. The whole flock was chasing that first ewe as if seized with madness. Bits of grass and clods of dirt flew everywhere. He closed his eyes and hugged the turf.  

Two hands seized his wrists. He knew even with his eyes shut that they were John’s. Sherlock let himself be towed toward the fence, out of the path of the remaining sheep. It was a touching gesture, as reckless and selfless as many another that John had made at equally dangerous if less ridiculous moments. But it was quite uncomfortable, bouncing on his stomach across the bumpy ground.

“John—“

“Down, Sherlock!” John whispered. “Against the fence!”

Both of them lay in the dark, in the smell, and listened.

The alarm shut off abruptly. Someone in the house had disabled it. The door to the farmhouse creaked open, then slammed. Sherlock could hear the voices of two women, one older and one younger, getting louder as they moved away from the farmhouse. This was of course exactly what they wanted; but there was always the chance that whoever came out to look for the sheep would stop and search the pen first.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” shouted the younger one.

“Tells me nothing,” yawned the older. “Describe the situation.”

“The fucking sheep broke out of the pen!”

“Well get Tip and go after them!”

“Tip’s been dead for two months, Alice. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Forgot,” said the older. “Sorry.”

“You spent a week getting drunk over it.”

“Go get the fucking sheep, Annabeth.”

“ _You_ go get them!”

“I gave you an order.”

“I can’t! You fucking _know_ they hate me!”

“All right, Annabeth. We’ll do it together. Go get all the shepherd crap out of the barn.”

Sherlock pressed his nose into the turf and savored the infrequent but not entirely unprecedented experience of thanking God for looking out for Rachel. The plan working, of course, was only to be expected and not providential. But that they should actually _open the barn_ , giving him the opportunity to hear and memorize every chime on the keypad…that was a gift.

Moments later Sherlock heard the roar of a motorcycle engine. He didn’t need to risk his cover by looking up. That was the sound of Harry’s bike. During his special study of the habits of sheep, he had noted that some farmers used motorbikes now instead of dogs to herd them. But they probably did not use anything nearly as high performance as this vehicle.

“Golf Mike Juliet,” Sherlock murmured into the earpiece, after silence had fallen. “Stage 1 complete, targets approaching.”

“Yeah, the alarms were a bit of a giveaway,” Lestrade’s voice said.

“Names Annabeth and Alice.”

“Are they really,” Lestrade answered. “What a treat for Juliet. Back in a bit.”

John had one hand on the fence, ready to stand up and jump it. But Sherlock found his attention drawn back to the grass he was lying on.

Sherlock began crawling forward, feeling with his hands the firm domes and spongy depressions that made up the strange texture of the turf inside the pen. It couldn’t be damage done by the sheep; the pattern was too regular, hexagonal, almost like honeycomb. There were no tears or breaks in the turf, which had stood up well to the ovine onslaught. It was…it was as if embossed. As if something hard, dome-shaped and about a foot in diameter, had been thrust up from underneath, over and over, and deformed the turf around it every time.

“Sherlock?” John said. “Shouldn’t we—“

Sherlock drew a long narrow blade out of one of the pockets running along the leg of his black trousers.

“There’s something under here, John,” Sherlock said. “Something man-made. We’re right on top of it. This could be our way in.”

John dropped to the ground to watch Sherlock drive the blade into the turf.

It went in nearly the full twelve inches; but it stopped with a vibrating shock. It had struck something hard. More give than bedrock, certainly. Or steel. Perhaps it was some kind of molded resin or plastic.

Sherlock began twisting the knife, cutting around the edges of the dome. John hovered on the other side, watching the operation as keenly as, Sherlock imagined, he had watched Mary giving birth.

*   *   *   *

**RACHEL’S BLOG, ENTRY EIGHT, CONTINUED**

I bent my knees as I landed, to absorb some of the impact. I still wound up sitting down on the floor rather suddenly. It was a hard white tile floor. The light was very bright and it really made the white walls glare.

At least while I was falling on my bum I got a look at the ceiling. It was a big room, much bigger than I had expected. It had six sides, and in the middle of each side, at the top of the wall, was a chute just like the one I’d come down, only some were bigger and some were smaller. I couldn’t figure out how people got into the room otherwise. But there must be some way, because there was a kind of round column going floor to ceiling in the middle and painted just as white as white could be. The woman standing next to it was well over five feet tall and looked nearly as old as my mother. She had her blonde hair up in a clip at the back and around her neck there was a chain holding a small black ball that looked like dark glass. She was wearing white, instead of black. She was tapping on a curved screen attached to the kiosk at about eye level.

When she heard me land, she carried on tapping for a bit. I thought that was stupid because it gave me time to run but then as I was looking around I realized there wasn’t anywhere to go. At least whatever the door was, I couldn’t see it. And another thing I could not see was anything that looked like a red lever that you might pull to open an emergency hatch.

“Hello there,” said the woman, with a cheerful smile. “Had enough, eh? Time to go home?”

I didn’t know what to say. She seemed friendly, and nice. But this was not what I had expected. It was not what Alex had told me to expect.

“Oh dear. Have they been telling you stories?” Her voice was quite pleasant, really, and her blue eyes reminded me a bit of Miss J’s when she was in a good mood. “You mustn’t listen to the older girls, my dear. They like to frighten the new ones. It’s always been our policy that any girl who’s unhappy here or not getting on has the right to leave at any time. What’s your name, dear?”

I said, because my stomach was not feeling right at all at the moment, “My name’s Ariadne.”

“Ariadne.” She swiped a finger down one side of the screen and I saw names scrolling up. She clucked her tongue. “I wish they wouldn’t give the data entry to the thirteen-year-olds. They’re so distracted. I’m afraid there’s no Ariadne your age on my roster, dear. Can you give me your full designation?”

I stood up, just to play for time, because I had no idea what she was asking me for. I looked up at the ceiling as if I was trying to remember it. I looked at the round things inside the hexagon. Inside each raised circle was a bright disc of white metal. I don’t know why. But the sight of all those round openings, so neatly grouped together inside that big hexagon, made me a bit nervous. I didn’t want to give her my full designation, whatever that was.

“Could I just go back to my room now?” I said.

She smiled.

“I’m afraid not, dear. But don’t worry. We’ll soon have you out of here, and then all your troubles will be over.”

She meant it kindly, it seemed. But I felt cold all over while she said it.

*   *   *   *

**SHEEP PADDOCK**

**DEVIL’S DYKE ORGANIC FARMS**

John watched Sherlock turn back the turf, as if retracting the lips of an incision.

“Help. Quickly,” Sherlock said, staring into the hole.

John reached into the hole along with Sherlock and they began chucking out handful after handful of dirt. It was John’s hand that first struck the hard domed surface underneath.

As the dirt was cleared away from it, the hole began to gleam. Just a little white disc at first, like a tiny reflection of the full moon. And then it widened. And then John snatched both of his hands out of the hole as if it were full of fire.

“What is it?” Sherlock demanded. His blackened hands were poised in the air, waiting for John to put words to whatever expression it was that had terrified Sherlock.

“It’s a skull,” John breathed. “It’s—it’s a—“

Sherlock began removing more dirt. The familiar fissures, the curvature, the bony processes. But so, so, so pitifully scaled-down. So, so small.

“It’s a _child’s skull,”_ John repeated.

John could barely draw breath to say it. His field of vision contracted. He could feel the veins on his temples throbbing.

“Not all of them make it to the field,” Sherlock murmured. “That's what Irene said. Of course they must be disposed of somehow. This is the burying ground. But...no. They’re not _burying_ the bodies. Too visible, the shovels, the turf, bound to attract…” Sherlock’s breathing seemed to have stopped for a moment. “They’re…from _underground,_ they’re…pushing them _up_ somehow.”

“This place,” John gasped. “This place—is—so much more--horrible—“

Sherlock wiped his knife blade, sheathed it, flipped the turf back down, and stood up. He grasped John by the elbow and shoulder and coaxed him to his feet.

“Up, John. Leave it. Just leave it. It’s been ages in the ground. It’s not her.”

“It's someone's daughter,” John gasped. His eyes darted over the turf inside the paddock. "There must be...dozens..."

Sherlock’s grip became quite painful. Sherlock shook him, just once.

“John.” Sherlock said, turning him round and staring at him. “You MAY NOT THINK THAT THOUGHT. You MUST NOT. Rachel is alive and she is depending on you. _I_ am depending on you.”

John nodded. He swallowed.

“The barn,” John said.

Sherlock gave out a sigh and went nearly limp with relief.

“Yes, John. The barn.” Sherlock hopped the fence and helped John over. “Nearly there,” Sherlock murmured, guiding him forward by the arm. “Nearly there.”

*   *   *   *   *

**RACHEL’S BLOG, ENTRY NINE, CONTINUED**

“If you could just give me the rest of your designation.”

The woman with the little black ball round her neck was still trying to sound patient and kind. But she was angry. I have seen a lot of adults pretend to be patient when they really want to wring my neck and I know what it looks like.

“The most recent Ariadne on my roster was 1979. Clearly that wasn’t you. It’ll only take a moment but I’m afraid I do need it for my records.”

By now I was all the way back against the wall, in one of the hexagon’s corners. I thought that would be the best place to strike from, if I had to defend myself against…against whatever. The white paint on the walls was so smooth and so cold. There was a smell in the air, too. It was…I persuaded Dad and Lolo to compost instead of throwing out food scraps for a few weeks one summer. That smelled pretty bad, much worse than this; but it was the same smell. It was odd, when you looked around the room and saw how it was so bright and clean and disinfected.

“Ah well,” said the woman. “I can do the paperwork afterward.”

Her taking a step toward me was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. I didn’t even know what I was afraid of. But I did not want her near me. I did not want her to touch me.

“Stop,” I said. “Stop. Don’t come any closer. Don’t come any closer or I’ll scream.”

“You are silly,” she said, cheerfully. “Scream away, dear. I don’t mind.”

I did scream. I screamed quite loudly. I used the special high pitch that Dad always says kills nerve endings in his ears every time I do it. I used my very highest volume.

And she did mind. It stopped her, for a moment. But then she started moving again.

I was drawing breath for another when I heard a _whissssh_ sound. In the middle of one of the walls opposite, a doorway appeared. I was just trying to work out why I hadn’t seen it before when I saw my mother coming through it. She was moving faster than anyone in that place ever moved. I couldn’t really see her face but it wasn’t really necessary. She was livid.

“Audrey Gloria! Stop this INSTANTLY!"

Lolo’s voice can shut up a whole room. I don’t know if my mother’s voice could do that because I’ve never heard her try it, but it certainly stopped this woman in her tracks.

“Agnes,” said the other woman. Her voice was ice cold now. “How nice to see you again. I didn’t think you still knew how to find the room.”

"Nobody's turfed on the first day!"

The other woman laughed, and glanced back at me.

"Agnes, I know your eyes may not be as sharp as they once were, but this is  _clearly_ not her first day." 

“That is Rachel Watson," my mother said. Her voice was shaking and so were her hands. "She is visiting at my invitation. You are _not authorized._ ”

The other woman said nothing. She just let her hands fall to her sides.

My mother crossed the room in a straight line, keeping her eyes on the other woman. She took my hand quite roughly.

“Come with me, Rachel.”

I had to trot to keep up with her. After the doors closed behind me, my mother hauled me down the corridor and round one bend and then stopped. She took me by the shoulders and pushed me up against the wall.

“Do not EVER run off like that again, do you hear me? EVER! And DO NOT TRUST Alexandra! Do not trust ANYONE!”

My Dad has a bit of a temper. Lolo too. Aunt Harriet even can snap pretty fiercely. But none of them every scared me the way my mother did at that moment.

“I’m sorry, Mummy,” I mumbled.

She burst into tears. So did I.

My mother crouched down in front of me, with one hand over her mouth and the other, much more gently now, on my shoulder. She cried for a little while. I am afraid I was crying too.

“I’m sorry, love,” she said. “I was just so—I didn’t know where you were. You are lucky Anthea spotted you. This place is—very—“

I think she was about to say _dangerous_. But then she stopped.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just…I was looking for you, and I couldn’t…and I was already…”

She wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand and swallowed. The look on her face made my stomach hurt.

“You see I really needed to find you right away,” she said. “Because…oh Rachel. Something awful’s happened.”

It was almost funny because so many other awful things had been happening recently. But it wasn’t because looking at her I knew somehow it was about my dads and knowing that scooped out my insides.

“What is it?”

I was trying to be brave. It didn’t work very well.

“Your aunt Harriet’s here,” my mother said. “I’ll take you to her. She’ll tell you.”

I almost couldn’t hear her. My stomach was still tight and I was also starting to feel a bit hot.

“Aunt Harriet?” I said. “Here?”

“She texted me as soon as she heard. I told her where we are. When—something like this—it doesn’t matter, Rachel, I’m still angry with her but you’re more important. Come along,” she said, standing up and letting out a fresh burst of tears. “Would you like me to carry you, love?”

I felt very wobbly. I said, “Yes.”

She took me in her arms. I put my arms around her neck and wrapped my legs around her hips and laid my head against her shoulder. My insides were churning around in me like a whirlpool. I knew that everything was still horrible. But I would see my Aunt Harriet again. She didn’t completely hate me. She still cared about me at least a little bit. Maybe she could make at least some of this all right.

END CHAPTER


	19. DER HOLLE RACHE

 

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY TEN**

I had never been to this part of the building before. The hallways weren't papered like they were in the school and in the corridors outside my mother's apartment. They were covered in gray paint with a very high gloss, the kind used for lavatories and high traffic areas. The doorways and the doors inside them were stainless steel. The air seemed a bit cooler. 

My mother stopped. I stopped too. She crouched down and put her hands on her knees and looked into my eyes.

"Now, I should warn you...Harry has been in a serious car accident. Her wrist has been broken and she's lost the use of her legs."

"What happened to her?" I said. 

"She'll be perfectly all right in a few days," my mother said, though I knew she didn't mean it. "But just please don't climb on her or hug her, Rachel, she's in a lot of pain right now. We put her in one of the infirmary rooms so we can monitor her while she's here."

I nodded. I tried not to look as frightened as I felt. All this time everything was kept secret from my Aunt Harriet and my dads and now my mother had just brought Aunt Harriet into the middle of this place. And if Aunt Harriet was injured then my mother should have brought  _me_ to Aunt Harriet's hospital. And if she hadn't it must be because my mother didn't want me to leave this place. I mean I knew for the weekend. But I was starting to think maybe she didn't plan to let me leave it  _ever._

"Also, your Aunt Harriet is a bit confused," my mother said. "She thinks you were in the car with her when the accident happened. You were very much on her mind at the time because--well. Apart from that she's perfectly all right."

I wished my mother would just open the door. I felt like I did not know what was real any more. I felt like she could open the door and maybe it would not be my Aunt Harriet. Maybe it would be a hungry lion or a zombie or knives. I wanted it to be over.

My mother put her hand against a metal plate mounted next to the door. It slid open.

It was a strange room. There was all kinds of shiny steel medical equpiment, racked up neatly around the walls, and there was this one long mirror right the way along one of the walls. And in the middle of it was a metal table like you see in Frankenstein films and there was this body draped in a white sheet on it and when it sat up I almost thought it would be Frankenstein but it wasn't. It was my Aunt Harriet.

It was a strange moment and not a good strange. It was my Aunt Harriet but when I saw her I thought  _it's my mother in disguise again._ I knew it couldn't be because my mother was right next to me. But it didn't seem like Aunt Harriet. I don't know how to explain it. She didn't look at me properly. Her face didn't look the way it looks when it sees me. It was her face, but it was like there was somebody else living in it.

"Here's Rachel come to see you," my mother said, chirpily. "How are you feeling?"

I stayed where I was, about a foot inside the doors. My hands were clutching each other hard. I looked at Aunt Harriet and I just had no idea what had happened to her.

She tried to smile but it didn't really work. 

Finally, Aunt Harriet said, "How are you, sweetheart?"

Her voice made her seem a tiny bit more real.

I said, "I'm all right."

Which was of course completely untrue. But I honestly did not know what else to say.

"You're not hurt?" Aunt Harriet said.

"No, Aunt Harriet," I answered. "I'm fine."

"Good."

Aunt Harriet let out a sigh. One of her hands ran over her gray hair. She looked like a very old woman, trying to remember where she'd left her glasses. 

"Rachel," my Aunt Harriet said. "What I'm going to say to you is going to be very upsetting. I know you're going to have a lot of questions. Can you please wait to ask them until I've finished what I have to say first?"

My mother was looking at Aunt Harriet. My mother's face was very serious. I saw my mother's head nodding, just slightly.

"All right, Aunt Harriet," I said.

My voice was wobbling a bit. I knew it was something about my dads. I don't know how I knew. Maybe I couldn't think of anything else that would make Aunt Harriet so old and helpless and sad.

"Thank you, sweetheart," my aunt said.

Aunt Harriet folded her hands in her lap. She looked down at them, and then up at me.

"Rachel, your father and Lolo..."

Aunt Harriet looked down at the table. She glanced at my mother. My mother nodded. I saw that and suddenly I wanted Aunt Harriet not to say another thing ever. I wanted the whole world to blow up. Anything so that my Aunt Harriet never told me what my mother wanted her to tell me.

Aunt Harriet looked at me. She swallowed. Then she breathed in very sharply.

"Your father and Lolo are looking for you, sweetheart, and they  _will_ find you."

Aunt Harriet's voice had become different. Her face looked different. Her eyes brightened as if they'd been switched on. Her hands were moving. She was speaking very very fast but I could still hear every word because she was really biting them off.

"I don't know how long it will take them because I don't know exactly where we are. It could be a day, a week, a year, more than a year. But _they will find you_. Other parents have had their children stolen and never recovered them, but none of those parents were Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. So. Do not try to rescue yourself. Do no try to rescue _me_. The grown-ups have all that sorted. Your  _only_ responsibility right now, Rachel, is to stay alive until they get here. Do you understand?"

When you get very very very tightly wound up sometimes you don't notice till the spring goes and then everything just goes flying. Hearing my aunt say all that touched the spring and there was so much unwinding inside me I could hardly stand up. My Aunt Harriet was here and she said _rescue_. She said  _stolen._ She said  _stay alive._ So what I had been feeling ever since my mother told me that I wouldn't be going home on Sunday, all that was true. I was stolen. I was in danger. I did need a rescue and I really was going to have one because my dads really were coming for me. I didn't have to do everything all by myself any more.

I was sort of crying so I nodded to show I understood.

"Thank you, Rachel. Now. The other thing you--Mary, STOP!"

My mother must have moved toward her, though I didn't see her do it. My Aunt Harriet sort of swung around to face my mother. Her legs slid with her, and her knees bent over the edge of the table so her feet were swinging in the air. They were bare and kind of small for a grown-up's feet and I think that watching them and thinking how funny they looked is the only reason I didn't just go utterly bonkers.

My aunt stabbed at my mother with her pointer finger and yelled at her almost as loud as my mother had just yelled at me.

"Just STOP IT and SIT STILL and LISTEN to me, Mary, because you have _fucked_ yourself in ways that you don't even know about, and I am the only person in the UNIVERSE right now who wants to help you out!"

"Rachel," my mother said, keeping her eyes on my aunt Harriet. "I'm sorry to say this, but your aunt has obviously sustained some brain damage, and she doesn't know what she's saying. You shouldn't see her like this. We should go."

I launched myself toward the table. My mother grabbed me before I reached it. She took hold of both my wrists and tried to spin me around. I gave her a standing side-kick in the stomach. 

It did not have enough power to knock her over. But it did break her hold. I climbed onto the table. I crawled into Aunt Harriet's lap and I attached myself to her torso with all the limbs I had.

I felt Aunt Harriet's arms around my shoulders. "It'll be all right, Rachel. Your dads will be here, sooner or later, and--"

"Rachel, your father and Sherlock are dead."

My whole body went tight again.

"They're not, sweetheart," Aunt Harriet said, stroking my hair. "Your mother wants you to think they are. But they're not."

"They  _are!"_ my mother shouted.

"How do you know?" my aunt shouted back. "Did you kill them yourself?"

 "No!" 

I looked over at my mother. She was close to the table and her face was very red. She looked like she wanted to hit someone but she couldn't quite figure out how.

"But someone  _has killed them,"_ my mother said _._  "I showed you a photo of them both DEAD. How can you give her false hope like that?" _  
_

My aunt stared at her.

"No, Mary," she said, and her voice had gone back to being a regular speaking voice quite suddenly. "You showed me a photo of the two of them lying down with their eyes closed."

"That's how they died!" my mother shouted. "They were trapped in the back of a car and they pumped in carbon monoxide and smothered them!"

Even if it wasn't true, it sounded so horrible and it made me imagine such horrible things that I closed my eyes and hid my head against Aunt Harriet's shoulder and screamed.

"Rachel, that's a bit too loud in my ear, sweetheart," Aunt Harriet said. "Come on, Mary. You can't expect me to believe that. Even for a Bond villain that would be a stupid way to kill someone."

My mother actually looked a bit offended.

"Carbon monoxide is invisible, it has no odor, it's the perfect method of--"

"Carbon monoxide is a  _terrible_ method!" my aunt interrupted. "It's really slow, the effects are reversible, and if the subject is conscious, all he has to do to foil the assassination is leave the environment. And if the environment is a bloody  _car_ , how hard can that be?"

"It worked, didn't it?" 

The way my mother said that made it feel like she  _wanted_ my dads to die. Maybe Aunt Harriet felt so too because she got really mad.

"It did not work, Mary. Even if it was tried. Because I'm pretty sure that my brother knows the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, and I'm one hundred per cent certain that Sherlock knows how to get out of a locked room. Anyway, that's not a proper assassination, that's like...some kind of...high-stakes testing. Can you figure out how to escape before you die? Oh good, then you can live."

My mother had that startled look again. I don't know if my aunt noticed. She was still just rolling on.

"So don't tell me any more fucking stories, Mary. If you really meant  _business,_ you'd have done it the way they did it to Mycroft. Two shots, back of the head, nobody sees it coming!"

My aunt was breathing hard and very red in the face. My mother was not as red in the face or breathing as hard and she was very still but all the same I didn't think she was feeling very well.

"They are dead, Harry," my mother finally said. "I know you don't want to believe it, but you must accept--"

"Based on what?" my aunt said. "A bloody photo? For fuck's sake--oh--I'm sorry, Rachel--for frabjous' sake, Mary, after what that man did to my brother, if you want me to believe that Sherlock Holmes is dead, you better bring me the body and you better let me do the autopsy myself!"

I looked up because my mother did not shout anything back. She just stood there. Her mouth was closed and her eyes looked very surprised.

"Jubjub frumious calloo," Aunt Harriet said. "Mary, that's not even a recent photo. John doesn't have his bald spot."

My mother took out Aunt Harriet's phone, which for some reason she was carrying, and started doing things to it.

"That photo is faked, Mary," Aunt Harriet repeated. "I thought  _you_ faked it. You're telling me you thought it was  _genuine?_ "

I twisted my neck a bit to see the picture. Aunt Harriet let go so I could turn round and look at it, but she kept her arms sort of loose around me.

"I think that's from Dad's blog," I said.

"Rachel, you're not supposed to read John's blog," Aunt Harriet said.

"I know, but I do, and I think that's from--"

"Oh, you're right!" Harry was looking at it now too. "You're right, they just cut out the images from that picture Lestrade took of them both crawling out of the bungalow after he nearly got them both killed with--"

"The Devil's Foot!" I said. It seems odd now but I was really chuffed at guessing it right. It was like for a moment we were all playing the same quiz game and I was just delighted to have helped the team win.

"Yes, and that was, what, 2017--"

"Oh!" my mother shouted, and she wasn't on our team any more. "So your memory's back, is it?"

"IT NEVER LEFT!"

Aunt Harriet swung her hands out and one of them almost hit my mother. Not because she was trying. My Aunt Harriet does that, when she's really worked up the hands just take off and you need to be careful to stay out of their path.

"This whole bloody time, I've been--well, all right, for the first five minutes there I was pretty confused. Sorry about that. So awkward. For both of us. But  _after_ that, yes, that was me playing you."

"You fucking _bitch!"_

My mother was nearly as angry with Harry as she had been with me in the corridor after I got out of the hexagon room. It felt very bad to me. And then my mother's hand moved very quickly and suddenly.

Before it got to wherever it was going, my aunt was shouting at her.

"Don't you DARE! Don't you DARE touch me in front of her!"

My mother's shoulder relaxed. Well I wouldn't say any part of my mother was relaxed at that moment, but her shoulder dropped.

My mother said, "Rachel, I want you to leave the room."

"NO!" I cried. I clutched Aunt Harriet close again.

Aunt Harriet said, "Listen, Mary, if you take nothing else away from this conversation please remember this: DO NOT let anyone separate you from Rachel. Let that happen once and you will never see her again."

"Oh, NOW you tell me!" my mother shouted. And I almost thought she sounded as if she were crying, but when I looked there weren't any tears. My aunt calmed down a bit.

"Mary, you were the one doping her infant formula. Do not try to make me feel bad about that."

My mother's jaw dropped. I was pretty surprised myself. She seemed to be choking on something for a moment, and then she yelled, "I never did that!"

Aunt Harriet looked startled. They looked at each other and it was quiet.

Then my aunt laughed.

"Nearly had me," she said. "Even after all this time. Is everyone here as good at lying as you are, or were you top of your class?"

"I'm not lying--"

"Oh GROW UP!" I had not thought my aunt's voice went up to that volume. "You did it and we caught you and any court we took that evidence to would have removed Rachel from your custody on the spot and they would have been right to do it. But no, it's always someone  _else_ 's fault--"

"Why would I DO a thing like that?" my mother cried.

"I don't know, Mary! Why the fuck DID you?"

It looked as if my mother were about to come apart. She was leaning back against the wall as if without it she would fall down. Her face was wobbling.  

"Because I couldn't stand to hear her cry!"

The tears all came out of her eyes at once.

"Look." My aunt's voice had gone soft and low, the way it does when she's trying to talk me down. "You're in over your head here, Mary. I can help you, but you have to let me--"

"YOU help ME?" my mother shouted. "In over MY head? You don't even know where the fuck you are!"

"Maybe not, but at least I know you don't get  _ten years_ of retrograde amnesia after a mild concussion."

"It's been known to happen!" my mother said.

My aunt looked at her the way she looks at me sometimes when I've knocked over a bookcase or something.

"Who told you that, Mary?" she said. "That child in the white coat you sent in here to play doctor? Well then either she's getting all her medical training from American soap operas, or she is not your friend."

It seemed like that last thing Aunt Harriet was a real shock to my mother. And I had thought my mother was pretty much all the way shocked already.

"You know, Mary," my aunt said, "if I had time, I would feel sorry for you, because I don't think you understand how delusional you are. I make up this load of  _bollocks_ about amnesia, hoping against hope it might get me out of being tortured, and you saw right away how it was going to help you with Rachel. And because of that you swallowed it all and you let me play you. And you never realized and you should have, Mary, you _really_ should have, because I am honestly not very good at this. And instead of yelling at me, Mary, you should be saying to yourself, 'My goodness. Who _else_ might be playing me right now without my realizing it?'"

My mother started breathing and it sped up and it almost looked for a bit as if she were about to faint.

Instead, she screamed, "You're lying! You're just manipulating me!"

"Mary, I have been manipulating you for HOURS!" Aunt Harry shouted back. "What I am trying to do is STOP manipulating you. Because sometime soon, _someone_ is going to come through those doors and drag me out of here, and after that  _you_ will be the only one who can protect Rachel and you MUST get better at it than you are right now."

"Nobody in here wants to harm Rachel."

"I'm pretty sure Alex did, Mummy," I said.

My mother sighed. She passed a hand across her forehead.

"Alex was just doing her job, love," my mother said. "You're too young, you don't understand how this place works."

I thought maybe it was time for me to do a bit of screaming. 

"And I DON'T EVER WANT TO!"

"All right, Rachel," Aunt Harriet said. "One of you at least has to keep it together. Your mother has put you in a _very_ dangerous situation and this conversation has made it worse. That mirror over there is an observation window. Your mother appears to have forgotten this, but it means that--"

My mother grabbed a big metal tank that was hanging on one of the walls. She charged across the room right at the mirror. She bashed the metal end of the tank right through the mirror. The glass broke into tiny jagged bits. My mother ran the bottom of the tank around the edges of the empty window frame, clearing all the glass out. 

There was a room on the other side of the frame. But there was no one in it.

"Whoever it was," Aunt Harriet said, "she's only gone for reinforcements or something. Mary, please, you can do whatever you like with me afterwards but will you please. Listen. NOW."

"Listen to  _what?"_

My mother was absolutely raging now, but at least she stayed over by the empty mirror and didn't charge at us. I suppose Aunt Harriet took this as a good sign.

"Rachel, your mother does not want to harm you--at least in the physical sense. Obviously she's done you loads of harm in just about every other sense. But your mother is not in charge here, and--"

"How do  _you_ know?" my mother shouted. "For all you know--"

"We don't have TIME for this, Mary!" my aunt said. "But you know what, fine. Let me tell you how I know. All of this," and she waved her hand at the stuff on the walls, "is institutional grade. You didn't buy it; you never had the resources. We're at a facility of some kind, and there are obviously other people in it because you sent in your doctor. But she's not a real doctor, so obviously we're at whatever place it is where they taught you how to be other people. A place like that has a hierarchy. You're not at the bottom or you wouldn't be able to order up your little chickadee and tell her what to do. But you're not at the top either. Because no organization that trains women to do what you do would be allowed to exist in these islands if the men didn't know they had it under control. So I don't know where the ceiling is here, Mary, but as sure as God made little apples I know that there is  _someone_ at the top of this chain with a Y chromosome."

My mother didn't contradict her.

"Bringing Rachel in here must be a big enough violation of your rules that you would have had to get it approved all the way up the chain. So someone who is not you, someone who has more power than you, must have signed off on this operation for reasons of his own. He'd have said he was doing it as a favor, to reward your loyalty or something, but people who get to be where _he_  is don't get there by giving a frumious slithy about  _other people."_

I don't think my mother's face could have been any paler if she were actually dead.

"He approved this insane plan and from the beginning you should have asked yourself  _why._ And you never did, did you? Not even once."

My mother's voice dropped to a whisper.

"What do you think he wants with her?"

My aunt threw her hands up in exasperation. "How should _I_ know?"

There was that  _whissssh_ sound again.

We all looked at the open doors.

There were three people who came through them. There was a young woman in the middle, wearing a white coat like the ones Molly wears in the laboratory. Alanna was on one side of her and Aminta on the other.

"Hello, Rachel," said the one in the center. "I'm Ada. I'm so pleased to meet you. I've heard  _so_ much about you."

She held her hand out. I grabbed tighter on to Aunt Harriet.

"We're going on a visit, sweetie," said Ada. "You can bring your aunt and your mum if you like."

My mother didn't say a word. She was looking from Ada to Alanna to Aminta and back again. It looked to me as if she were estimating.

"Who are we visiting?" I said.

Ada smiled. 

"We're going to see Sir."

END CHAPTER.


	20. THE IMITATION GAME

**DEVIL'S DYKE ORGANIC FARMS**

**THE BARN**

It was now clear to John why Devil’s Dyke Farms needed such a large barn. Apart from the two horses in the stalls at the rear, the barn currently held, along with Harry’s battered Honda Civic, a strange green-painted thing that looked like the result of a drunken liaison between a jeep and a tank. A cursory examination of the treads confirmed that it was the mystery overland vehicle that Lestrade and Sherlock had deduced. And yet there was still quite a capacious space near the middle of the barn where the floor was bare except for the straw that covered it. Which, once swept aside, revealed a battered old pair of what looked like cellar doors. Sherlock, crouched amongst the heaped-up straw and refusing to acknowledge the smell of manure that was rising from the cleared floor, pulled out a mini flashlight and took a close look at the padlock.

“Not new,” he murmured, looking at the scratches around the keyhole, “but frequently and recently used. We could just bash the padlock off, but let’s remember that AGRA in their wisdom have posted as guards to this entrance a brace of operatives who are primarily distinguishable for stupidity, laziness, and alcoholism. The entrance to the barn is alarm-protected…so why not keep the key to the cellar doors in here?”

Sherlock looked out toward the barn doors, which had been left slightly ajar. He held out one hand as if it were a divining rod. It led him, as surely as a divining rod could have, to a nail driven in about five and a half feet from the floor to the right-hand side of the doorway, from which he lifted a grimy metal key.

Which fit the padlock.

“God bless Annabeth,” John murmured.

Sherlock removed the padlock and flung the doors open. Inside the cavity was a flight of concrete steps leading down. They glowed with a strange bluish light that reminded John of his first PC’s crash screen.

“Hello, my beauty,” Sherlock breathed, rubbing his hands together.

“Sherlock—“ John called. But he was already on his way down the steps, motioning for John to stay behind.

It did not take long for John to get so jittery that the sound of the barn door creaking brought his gun straight into his hands.

“Queen to Queen’s level three,” said a voice on the other side.

Oh for Christ’s sake. “Come in, Greg,” John sighed, replacing the gun and trying to keep calm.

“Door, please,” Greg called back.

John pulled the doors open. In the darkness outside, vaguely outlined in moonlight, was strange group of dark figures. Greg, in a black leather jacket and dark jeans, carrying what looked to be Alice slung over one shoulder; and Molly, in the most form-fitting black sweater and leggings he had ever seen on her, holding Annabeth under the shoulders. Janine, inhabiting a black catsuit as effortlessly as if she were the reincarnation of Julie Newmar, was holding Annabeth’s legs by the ankles. The only two people in this group who did _not_ look like Top Secret Special Agents were the unconscious Alice and Annabeth, both of whom were loosely wrapped in dirty dungarees and plaid flannel.

“Hurry, she’s heavy,” Molly whispered.

John stepped back to let them drag their catch in. Greg laid Alice down in the straw. Janine and Molly skittered over to the other side of the cellar doors, dropping Annabeth onto the wooden floorboards with tremendous relief.

John knelt down to inspect Annabeth. She was breathing, but she was not moving; and though the eyes were open, it did not look as if anyone were home.

“Molly gave her a shot of…prevenarin, I believe they called it,” Janine said, combing her long hair back from her temples and wrapping it into a knot. “Greg there just punched Alice a few times in the head. Ah well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

“I’ve never heard of prevenarin,” John said. “It looks like it might be some kind of nerve toxin.”

“She looks awful,” Molly said, anxiously.

“That shite _is_ awful,” Janine answered. “And she can probably hear us, too, which makes it even worse. For her, anyway. Hello again, Annabeth!” Janine shouted, crouching down to lean over her. “It’s only me! I hope you don’t mind my dropping in on you at home like this, we had _such_ fun on our _last_ playdate!”

“Leise mit der Schadenfreude, bitte,” Sherlock said, stumping up the cellar steps. “We have no idea how much they can hear through that portal.”

He nodded to John. Together they closed the cellar doors. The five of them huddled in the straw, John and Sherlock looking at the other three across Annabeth’s inert body.

“Our luck has run out at last,” Sherlock began. “The security at the entry point was not actually designed by Annabeth. It requires a retina scan, handprint, _and_ voice recognition. Also there’s a security camera that takes a photo of your face, but luckily it’s not top quality.”

Lestrade groaned. Molly compressed her lips and furrowed her brow.

“Well all right, Molly,” Lestrade finally said, ruefully. “I’ve got the tools; you’ve got the talent. Let’s get to work.”

Lestrade took off the black leather jacket he was wearing and tossed it to Molly. She began removing tools from its pockets. Fingerprint powder, brushes, and a sheet of smooth white cardboard on which she carefully unrolled several patches of some kind of elastic transparent material, each about a foot in diameter.

“Which eye and which hand?” Molly said, reaching for the box of powder.

“Right for both.”

“Janine,” Greg said, having just reassembled a large camera from about six different bits concealed on his person. “Hold the lids on her right eye open.”

Greg held the lens right over Annabeth’s staring eyeball and pressed the button. It reminded John unpleasantly of watching Anderson photograph that pink-covered corpse at Lauriston Gardens. Maybe he shouldn’t have named Rachel after the dead daughter of a dead woman. Maybe he should never have married Mary. Maybe he should never have come home from Afghanistan. Maybe he should have died there, and that would have been an end to his making everyone around him suffer.

“Sent it,” Greg said. “See if it came through.”

Molly pulled out her phone to check. “Yes, lovely, thanks Greg.”

“De nada,” he said, and began disassembling the camera.

“Look at you, Molly,” said Janine, admiringly. “Little Miss Mission Impossible. Are you actually painting the veins freehand?”

Molly shook her head. “Tracing.”

She licked the tip of her tiny tiny brush, and went back to the screen of her phone. Through the translucent material John could see the image of Annabeth’s retina glowing.

“The real problem,” Sherlock muttered, “is that we only know twenty-five percent of Annabeth’s name. And though there are a limited number of viable girls’ names beginning with G, R, and A, we certainly do not have the means to try all the combinations they could make. There must be…”

John watched Sherlock rake the barn with his gaze, searching for something that might reveal it to him.

“Phone,” John said.

“What?”

“Alice’s phone. It’s in her pocket.”

Sherlock flung himself on her unconscious form and extracted a sleek black mobile. He crouched in the straw, inhaled the manure fumes as if they were perfume, and began looking at it.

He started laughing.

“What is it?” John said.

“It’s not locked,” he said. “Good old human error.”

Janine called out, “Feck you and your human error, Sherlock. I mean in the nicest possible way.”

Sherlock didn’t even notice. He was scrolling through Alice’s contacts. He selected one of them and pressed it. He put the phone on speaker.

Greg pulled another sleek black mobile out of the pocket of Annabeth’s flannel shirt.

“Don’t answer it!” Sherlock hissed.

From Alice’s phone, they heard a familiar voice say, “Annabeth Gail Romana Addison.” And then a different synthetic voice said, “Is not available. Please leave a message at the tone.”

Sherlock punched the off button.

“Oh. My. GOD,” Janine said.

She put a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter; but it wouldn’t be stifled. Molly gave out a tiny bit of a chuckle, but took herself in hand. She had finished tracing the pattern of veins on the translucent material. She took a scalpel out and began cutting out a circular piece from the center of the fabric. She peeled it off, laid it on the smooth white board, and turned her attention to Annabeth’s right hand.

Janine stepped over Annabeth’s body, returned to give it a swift kick, then strode across the barn to squat down by Sherlock. “Give me the phone, I’ll practice.”

“Couldn’t we just use the recording?” John said.

“If their security equipment is worth anything at all it’ll reject a recorded voice,” Sherlock said, handing Janine the phone. “But it’s good to have it in a pinch, in case Janine can’t get it right.”

“You worry about your own schemes and don’t bother about mine,” Janine said. “I’ll hear that voice in dreams till the day I die.”

“Yes, but are you _certain_ that you can replicate it with the requisite degree of accuracy?” Sherlock said.

“Are you certain you can distinguish Trichinopoly ash from bird’s-eye?”

“Yes!” Sherlock insisted.

“To each of us our special gift,” Janine said. She went off to a corner near Harry’s car and sat down, playing the message again.

John wandered over to look at Molly’s whiteboard. The round disc with the pattern of veins painted on it had shrunk to ordinary cornea size. Next to it was a spectral handprint covered with a pattern of ridges which John was sure had somehow been transferred to it from Annabeth’s inky right hand.

“I’m finished with her now,” Molly said.

Lestrade hoisted Annabeth as if she were a sack of flour. Janine, from her corner, surveyed the flopping of Annabeth’s limp head and arms with some satisfaction.

With one hand, Lestrade opened the hatchback of Harry’s car and dumped Annabeth into it. He returned for Alice, tossing her in on top of Annabeth.

“Make sure their airways are clear,” John said.

“They’ll be fine, John.” Lestrade closed the hatchback. He got the driver’s side door open, flipped the power lock on the driver’s side, and slammed it closed. John found the little BEEP oddly satisfying.

“Here,” Lestrade said. “Catch.”

John put a hand up to trap the object Lestrade flung at him. He opened his hand and looked down at his palm.

Harry’s car keys.

John’s eyes began to sting. This was the first of so many. All the objects he would sit there staring at, as he went through Harry’s apartment. All the things that would turn up months later in 221B and he would think _oh that’s Harry’s_ and then remember just a fraction of a second later that he could no longer return them to her. The long, long road of grief, paved with all the dropped and forgotten things that Harry had been called away from suddenly, to which she would never return.

He felt Lestrade’s hand on his shoulder.

“Never lose hope,” he said. “Molly’s given me up for dead I don’t know how many times, haven’t you, Molly?”

Molly looked up, frowning, and nodded, unhappily.

“And here I am!” Lestrade said, puffing out his chest with a self-mocking grin. “Still above ground and walking without support, and still aging like a fine wine.”

John felt himself smile.

“Put them in your pocket,” Greg said. “You can give them back to her when you find her.”

John had no hope that they would. But he did put the keys in his pocket.

“Good man,” Lestrade said, giving him another thump on the shoulder.

“All right, Janine,” Molly called. “I’m ready.”

Janine tucked the phone into her pocket. As she walked over to Molly’s whiteboard, Molly began dousing the little round retina disc furiously with a bottle of saline solution.

“It’s going to impair your vision in that eye and you’ll lose depth perception,” Molly said, as Janine knelt down by the board. “Also your eye will get inflamed if you leave it in very long, it’s not fitted or anything and it covers practically half your cornea.”

Janine rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and held her eyelids open with two fingers. “Just get it over with.”

Molly used one finger to lift up the disc, which fell into a convex shape. She carefully placed it over Janine’s eye.

“Ow.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Lord have mercy that stings.”

“I know, Janine, I’m really really sorry.”

Janine smiled, though it came out more as a grimace. Her right eye was clouded now, and she looked a bit like a newly-made zombie.

“Freaky,” Greg said, approvingly.

“Just put your right hand on top of this here,” Molly said.

Janine laid her hand on top of the translucent handprint. The edges wrapped around Janine’s fingers and the heel of her hand, conforming to it like a second skin.

“Ooh,” Janine said, looking at her palm and wiggling her fingers. “Clingy.”

There was a moment of silence, while Molly packed away all her tools, and they all looked at each other. John had a moment of panic which temporarily deprived him of the power of speech. They were his squadron now. He was their commanding officer. He might be sending them all to their deaths.

He felt Sherlock looking at him. And he heard what Sherlock wanted to tell him. _You’re a soldier. You’re my soldier. You’re the man for the job. You can do this._

“So,” John finally said. “Final review. Greg will stay here to guard the exit and alert us if anyone comes to investigate. Janine will get the portal open; Molly, Sherlock, and I come through behind her. Any witnesses to our entry must be neutralized before they can alert anyone.” John licked his lips nervously. “Please make every effort to neutralize opponents without killing them. Someday, God willing, we will be telling Rachel this story.”

“Alice and Annabeth are out of the game, so I think I’m all right with that,” Janine said.

In any case, John was the only one who was armed. That didn’t feel especially good to John, but he didn’t expect it to matter. This mission depended on stealth. If they had to fight their way out, they would lose. They were outnumbered, most likely outgunned, and in a building at whose layout they could only make the vaguest of guesses.

“Sherlock and I will find a place of concealment while Janine and Molly do recon. Janine, do your best to camouflage your right eye and right hand when not in use. Molly, if anyone asks you, what’s your name?”

“Ariana Gigi Renee Anemone,” she said.

“And it’s a mouthful,” Janine added.

“When you find Rachel do not engage. Contact Sherlock on the earpiece and describe your location. Keep Rachel within sight or earshot and apprise Sherlock of your movements. We will intercept."

Molly nodded. Janine said, “No worries.”

“As soon as we have Rachel, we retreat to this exit. We avoid discovery for as long as we can. We split up only if it is necessary to avoid pursuit and reconnoiter as soon as possible. Is everyone all right?”

Molly nodded, vigorously. John saw her little hands clenching into fists as she nerved herself up for it. Sherlock glanced at John from across the little circle, and John said what Sherlock wanted him to say.

“I cannot tell you,” he said, trying to smooth over the break in his voice, “how much it means to us that you are doing this.”

After a moment, Janine said, “Then don’t try, John.”

“All right then,” John said. “Let's go.”

Molly turned to Greg and gave him a very tight hug. He patted her on the back and whispered into her ear. Greg released Molly and drifted toward the barn doors, squatting in the straw and looking out through the crack. Janine led the way down the steps, with Molly trailing one step behind her. John and Sherlock followed, hanging back.

The entrance portal was a pair of enormous steel doors, painted mud-green, joined at the crooked center line like two halves of an evil grin. They looked far older than the blue-glowing apparatus mounted on the wall to the right of the door.

But Janine just sauntered up to it, smiled directly into the security camera, and placed her palm on the plate and her chin on the rest. A blue beam of light sprang from a pinhole in the door, probing Janine’s right eye.

“Retina scan complete. Input voice identification,” said the door.

Janine took her time, and enjoyed striking her pose.

“Annabeth Gail Romana Addison,” Janine said, clear as a bell and in Annabeth’s voice.

Nothing happened.

John felt his blood pressure rising. His face and neck were turning red. His heart pounded in a way he found professionally alarming.

And then John heard the whirr of a motor.

The line in the center, the crooked line separating the crooked teeth, was getting darker and deeper. And wider. Janine and Molly stood side by side, watching the doors retract, silhouetted against the light penetrating the widening shaft in the center, staring right into the heart of the mystery.

It was open now. All they had to do was walk in.

END CHAPTER


	21. HER LAST VOW

**MEANWHILE, AT THE MEDICAL RETENTION CELL**

 

Mary watched Rachel look Ada in the eye, and tried to figure out what to do next. Aminta and Alanna were both younger than Mary was and probably stronger, though Mary had vastly more combat experience. Ada herself was a bit of a question mark; she had been tracked for admin from the begining, and though her style was elegant it had never really been field-tested. Nevertheless, any of them could easily subdue a nine year old girl and a post-menopausal hemiplegic. And Mary was not sure that she could subdue all three of them without killing at least one of them in front of Rachel. She'd have to wait for an opportunity where at least one of them would be distracted or incapacitated.

Rachel, still clinging to Harry, said, "No. I'm not going."

Damn it, Rachel.

"Yes you are, love," Mary said. "It doesn't do to keep Sir waiting. Ada, can you find a chair for Harry, please?"

Ada nodded at Aminta. Aminta went searching the equipment on the walls, while Ada kept Rachel and Mary in her direct line of sight.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mary noted a flicker of something that seemed odd. It had come from Harry's direction. Harry was still turned to face her, her legs dangling over the edge of the table. The left one was not visible to the three stooges by the door; their view of Harry was blocked by Rachel's body.

The toes of Harry's left foot were wiggling.

Of course. That was why Harry had dragged out the "preparation" for the interview with Rachel for hours. She had deduced what Ada had done to her, and was waiting for the effects to wear off. If I survive this, Mary promised herself, I will never underestimate a Watson again.

"Sweetheart," Harry said, "I think we'd better go. I'm sure you can trust Sir the way you'd trust your own mother." 

Always sticking the knife in.

But no, Mary told herself. That was smart. Harry was letting Rachel know to be on her guard. Stop thinking of Harry as your adversary. She's the only ally you have.

Would Ada realize the epidural had worn off? She was not, after all, actually a doctor, and although everyone had basic training on all the drugs in the pharmakon, giving an epidural was not part of the standard bag of tricks. Mary had asked for that mainly for personal reasons. It had pleased her to know that Harry was in a way going through the experience of childbirth without reaping any of the benefits. Just as Mary had.

"I don't want to see Sir!" Rachel shouted. "They can't make me!"

Harry held Rachel's head against her shoulder, and whispered something into her ear. It was infuriating not to know what it was. Unspoken communication was essential in a situation like this, and Mary and Harry just didn't understand each other well enough to make it work. 

Rachel hopped off the table and ran to Mary, jumping toward her. Mary caught her, lifting Rachel so she could wrap her arms around Mary's shoulders and put her head against Mary's neck.

"Aunt Harriet says when they put her in the chair," Rachel whispered. "She says take me and run and she'll follow."

Mary patted Rachel on the back of her head. "Good girl, Rachel."

Harry was not insane enough to think she could win a fight with three trained combatants, with or without the element of surprise. The best she could possibly be hoping for would be to create a diversion that would allow Mary and Rachel a head start. And Harry certainly knew that being left behind would be the end of her. Without Mary's intervention, they would have alphaed Harry as soon as she got knocked off that bike. To anyone else at AGRA, Harry Watson was just a bit of rubbish waiting to be put in the bin.

An unwelcome little voice in Mary's head said, _So are you._

It was true. Mary knew that with a clarity that had eluded her before. Of course she'd known, when she was picked for Castorfall, that it was to be her last mission. She'd already outlived all the other women in her cohort. If she wasn't brought down by Sherlock or John or Mycroft's people after terminating him, AGRA would find a way to burn her. That was what the pregnancy had been about. Life insurance. So that after AGRA had no further use for Mary, John and Sherlock would still protect her.

It had worked, up to a point.

And then Mary had forgotten all of that after she'd killed Magnussen. It wasn't a mission. She'd done it for her own personal satisfaction; and it had been EXTREMELY satisfying. But of course AGRA had been monitoring him; and a day later Mary got the word tapping her for admin. Mary had really believed that they were belatedly recognizing her merit. That they were rewarding her loyalty. That her talent, for the work and also for dealing with Sir, had enabled her to beat the curse of the AGRA girls, which always mysteriously struck them down before their fortieth year.

All that was lies. Mary had been pulled back inside in order to do one last thing. God alone knew what it was or why. But once it was finished, they would rid themselves of her one way or the other. Unless she could get out first.

"Are you ready to come with us, love?" Mary said.

Rachel drew back to look Mary in the eye. Mary stopped trying to read her and just looked at her face. The spread of freckles over her nose. The reddish eyebrows that curved just the way her own would if she didn't shape them. The jaw that was set now just the way John's did when he was trying to compress some huge emotion into a tiny locked space inside him. The red hair, erupting in its exuberance from the long-repressed gene of some forgotten ancestor. The chameleon eyes, flecked with brown and hazel and green and blue. Searching Mary's own face, wondering what might be behind it, whether there was anything at all inside her mother that she could trust.

"It'll be perfectly all right," Mary said. "I'll keep you safe. I promise."

Mary had no idea whether Rachel believed that promise. She had no idea, really, whether Rachel _should_ believe it.

Aminta lifted a folded-up wheelchair from its hook on the wall and shook it open. She wheeled it over to the table and locked the wheels. Harry scooched over, raising an arm so Aminta could lift her by it.

Aminta made an attempt. Then she said, "Alanna, I need you over here. She's really heavy."

Mary watched Alanna take Harry by the other arm. "All right," Alanna said. "On three."

Each of them put one of Harry's arms around their shoulders, turned around, and began lifting her off the table.

Mary kept her eyes on Ada. Rachel was watching Harry, over her shoulder.

"One, two, three!"

There was a grunt from Alanna. Then two thuds, in quick succession, each accompanied by a howl.

Mary didn't even look. She grabbed the IV stand with her free hand, swung it around, and whacked Ada in the head with it.

While Ada crashed to the ground, Mary ran to the door. The key code still worked.

"Aunt Harriet!" Rachel cried. 

"Rachel, GO!"

That was Harry's voice. Mary risked a glance backward. Harry was, incredibly, still on her feet. She executed a really not too bad roundhouse kick to Aminta which temporarily drove her off. But Alanna knocked Harry's block away and landed a fist in her stomach. Aminta swept one of Harry's legs out from under her. Harry dropped heavily to the floor.

"Mummy, they're hurting Aunt Harriet!"

"Mary, get her out of here!" Harry shouted.

Rachel struggled to get down. She wanted to join the battle. What a spirit. What an AGRA girl she would have made.

Mary carried Rachel through the door. It slid closed behind her. 

"Mummy! Mummy, we can't leave her!"

"It's what she wanted," Mary said, turning south toward Escape Shaft #1. "Your fathers will rescue her when they get here. Now. How fast are you, Rachel?"

"I'm unbelievably fast," Rachel answered, promptly. 

"Right. When I set you down, keep hold of my hand. We're going to run like the wind, and then we're going to climb, and then we'll be out. Just focus on that, love. Running and climbing. Can you do that for me?"

"Of course I can," Rachel said. "But--"

Mary set her down and took her hand.

"Come on, Rachel! RUN!"

Mary took her hand. Rachel let her do it. Together they shot down the empty corridor.

END CHAPTER


	22. SPLIT THE BABY

The chamber into which Sherlock and John had retreated was only about six foot square. The sprawled and unconscious body of the woman who had been posted at the entrance took up most of the linoleum floor. Sherlock had to step over it carefully in order to get the widest-possible-angle view of what seemed to John like hundreds of tiny square video screens, each showing a different piece of the monstrous complex into whose bowels they had just introduced themselves. Perhaps Sherlock could piece it together. To John most of the screens looked identical. Corridors and rooms. Rooms and corridors. Either empty, or full of women and girls wearing black.

"Juliet Mike, this is Hotel Whiskey with some information on your position," Sherlock said. "There seem to be three levels, connected by lifts located in a central shaft. Lowest level is apparently dedicated to common space. Approximately...two hundred inhabitants currently in what appears to be a large conference facility down there. They appear to have reached the breakout session stage. Also a kitchen, food stores, play spaces, what appear to be the children's dormitories, communal showers, toilets, and...ooh, an olympic-sized indoor swimming pool."

"Sherlock," John interrupted.

"Uppermost level contains generators, air compressors, essentially the physical plant, and a curious hexagonal space built around the central shaft. Can't see from the monitors where the air intakes actually are, but I'm busy deducing their locations. We've entered at the central level at portal number three. All three entrance portals and all six light shafts originate from this level and are linked by corridors. You are currently moving through the corridor between light shaft number four and light shaft number five. Corridor appears clear. In fact all corridors on the main level appear clear except for you and--"

Sherlock stopped talking.

Sherlock rushed toward the wall of monitors, tripped over the woman on the floor, and just barely caught himself with his outstretched hands before falling. John's eyes swept the monitors so fast he was beginning to feel seasick when he spotted the tiny image of a woman with short blonde hair, holding by the hand an even tinier image of a red-haired child all dressed in black, streaking across the screen and then out of range of whatever camera it was. 

The electric shock of that fleeting image crackled from John's eyes to his heart, brain, and bowels. For a moment John felt fully paralyzed. Unable to breathe, unable to do anything but burn.

Sherlock grabbed John's shoulder to steady himself. With his other hand, Sherlock pushed the earpiece back into position and began rattling into it. "Targets Alpha and Romeo sighted traveling northeast via corridor from light shaft two to light shaft one. Both running. Juliet Mike, proceed counter-clockwise, attempt to make visual contact but don't let them see you."

John, following Sherlock's eyes, had picked them out again in what must be another section of the same corridor. But they weren't running. There were three other dark forms in that window. They had appeared very suddenly and they moved very swiftly.

"They're under attack," Sherlock cried, forgetting to whisper. "Three women, two on Mary one on Rachel. Proceed counterclockwise, get there as fast as you can." 

John kicked the door of the portal open. He took off at a run. Sherlock, overtaking him, was muttering frantically into the earpiece.

"I _know_ what John told you, Janine. We're intercepting. But if you get there first, then ENGAGE!"

So much for strategy. And for the phonetic alphabet. John had known that would happen. Most battle plans went to hell once the first shots were actually fired.

*   *   *   *

Anthea returned to her desk with a large mug of coffee. She set it down on the only part of the glassy desktop that was not actually a touchscreen. As she did so, she noticed a whole string of flashing lights, escalating from yellow through orange to red.

Sitting down with a sigh, she began playing herself a little surveillance camera concerto.

She only got a few bars in before she understood the situation completely and comprehensively.

She touched the intercom key. 

"Sir?" she said.

"Yes, Anthea?"

"John Watson and Sherlock Holmes have infiltrated the complex through Portal #3. The operative staffing Portal #3 Control Station is not responding. The intruders are moving toward Escape Shaft #2."

"Thank you, Anthea."

"This confirms that Abigail Glenda's kill report is fraudulent, Sir," Anthea continued.

"Of course," Sir replied. "I never doubted your assessment, Anthea, but I'm pleased to have some evidence supporting it. Please initiate Action Alpha for Abigal Glenda at your earliest opportunity."

"Understood, sir. And regarding the intruders?"

Time passed. The intercom remained open, but no instructions followed.

"Sir, what action would you like me to take regarding the intruders?" Anthea repeated, politely.

"None," said Sir, gruffly. "All necessary action has already been taken."

The intercom cut off.

Anthea began keying in the all-clears on the alarms that had been tripped, and did her best not to look as if she were wondering what Sir was talking about, and who else he was giving his orders to.

*   *   *   *   

Mary hit the floor hard. Before she could rebound there was a boot on the back of her neck and another in the small of her back. She was barely able to lift her head enough to see Ada, with Rachel hanging over one shoulder, stomping toward her. Rachel was pounding on Ada's back with both fists and kicking with both feet and thrashing; but Ada's grip on Rachel was not endangered by any of it. Ada was young, she was strong, and she clearly knew exactly what she was doing.

Mary made a last-ditch grab for Ada's ankle. Ada sidestepped, then stamped Mary's right hand into the floor.

Pain burst in Mary's hand and spread through her arm like fire. At least one bone broken. Probably more. Whatever noise Mary was making, she couldn't even hear it over Rachel's scream.

"Can't you shut her up?" That was Ardelia Gentian, to whom the boot pressing on Mary's neck currently belonged.

"Do your job and let me do mine," Ada snapped.

Rachel's scream continued, moving farther away. Then it abruptly shut off.

Mary felt a surge of panic. She caught the tail end of the hiss of a closing door. Ada had simply carried Rachel out of the corridor. Probably into one of the cross-tunnels that led to the central shaft. Assuming she hadn't been lying about taking Rachel to see Sir.

"Are we authorized?" That voice belonged to Agatha Glynn, who was currently resting most of her weight on Mary's back.

"Absolutely," replied Ardelia.

The boot lifted off Mary's neck. Mary knew it was going to come down again, hard enough to snap her spine.

Pushing off with her left hand, Mary tried to flip herself. The boot in Mary's back gave way. As her back met the hard floor, Mary looked up, expecting to see Ardelia's boot descending. What she saw was all of Ardelia, apparently airborne.

Before Ardelia began her descent, Mary felt something heavy land on her own abdomen and knock the wind out of her. Two rough hands grabbed the fabric of Mary's tunic and hauled her shoulders up. Mary looked into the face of whatever it was that had just sent Ardelia flying.

"Oh _God,_ " Mary muttered.

It was red, it was sweating, and its mouth was distorted for the scream about to come through it. But that was certainly the face of John Watson. Who was certainly not dead. Who was, instead, straddling Mary's waist and shaking her shoulders.

"WHERE IS SHE?"

Ardelia's body landed hard, outside Mary's field of vision. Somewhere, someone must have got a boot into Agatha, because she let out a grunt.

"Honestly, John," Mary gasped. "You might say hello first."

"Tell me where they've taken Rachel!" John shouted. He sounded panicked, though his grip wasn't getting any weaker.

From a short distance away came the sound of a fist hitting bone, and then another crash. Goodbye Agatha.

"I want shared custody," Mary said.

John reared back in disgust. "You want to  _negotiate?_ NOW?"

"Well you didn't give me a chance the first time!"

" _Do you know how much danger Rachel is in?"_ John shouted.

"Sssh!"

That was the voice of Sherlock. And of course John obeyed it, cocking one ear for all the world like the RCA dog.

"Listen, John," Sherlock whispered. "Listen. It's very faint, but--"

John listened. Mary tried to listen too. All she could hear was a high-pitched, far-off whine, like a compressor fan that needed oiling.

"That's her," John cried.

"Get up, John," Sherlock barked.

John climbed off Mary. She got to her feet. Sherlock stood there by the door to the cross-tunnel, inspecting the retina scanner.

"Open this door," he commanded.

Mary folded her arms and stood still.

"Visitation," she said. "She's not been harmed. She came of her own free will. I deserve visitation at least."

Sherlock let out a hiss of contempt. He looked over her shoulder, toward something that was pattering in their direction on what sounded like four feet.

Mary turned around to face whatever fresh hell was coming at her.

Janine. God almighty, it was Janine, with a bad eye and some kind of growth on her hand and...fucking... _Molly Hooper_. Both dressed up as AGRA girls. It would have made her laugh if her hand wasn't still hurting so much.

"Janine, get the door," Sherlock said. "Please."

"NO!" Mary lunged at Janine, but John intervened.

Janine stepped up to the scanner and put her messed-up right hand on the palmprint.

The door hissed open. Sherlock sprinted through it. John pushed Mary away from him, and ran to follow.

"Stay with her," Sherlock called, over his shoulder.

Mary found her feet and began running after them. She slammed into the closed door. Janine tried to block Mary from the scanner. Mary swung at Janine's head. It was a left, of course; so it didn't kill her, but it did send her staggering. Mary put her hand on the pad and positioned her eye for the scanner.

The blue light scanned her. The door did not open. Instead, a red light flashed briefly, and the automated warning voice blared out.

"Access revoked."

"FUCK!" Mary shouted.

Mary punched the retina scanner with her good hand.

The metal crumpled and the glass broke. Mary's good hand was now also less good.

"You eejit," Janine said, acidly, from somewhere behind her. "Run, Molly!"

But Molly was already running for the closest exit. Because although she and Molly were not, one hoped, familiar with AGRA protocol, they could see the blast doors coming down at either end of the corridor.

Molly ducked under the descending door. Janine got in after her. Mary had to drop and roll.

They were all on the other side when the blast door closed. Mary leapt up. Janine grabbed her arm.

"You're staying with us," Janine said. "If I have to knock you out and drag you behind us then I will. You're that far gone you shouldn't be allowed out at all without a minder. What was the meaning of that atrocious display?"

"Don't tell me you've never punched a wall," Mary said. "Used to be one of your favorite pastimes, or so the tabloids--"

"You've been reading my press. How flattering." Janine's voice acquired a sharper edge. "I thought I went pretty mad there for a while, Mary; but I've nothing on you. Shared custody? Visitation? Will you listen to yourself?"

"I'm her mother!" Mary hissed. "They stole her from me! It wasn't fair!"  

"Shut up!" 

That was from Molly Hooper. The mouse that roared.

"Just--shut up! You are--a--" Molly was positively quivering with anger. "You were a terrible mother then and you're terrible now. You're just a really horrible person in general. Rachel's in danger and you know that and they asked you to help them help her and you--you--you don't care about--anything but--OWNING her!" 

Molly was nearly choking with rage. Mary could have shut her up minutes ago, but she was just so funny to watch.

"You're not even a bad mother," Molly shouted. "You're like something a million times worse than that. You're a--you're a--"

"Baby-splitter," Janine cut in.

Mary rounded on her. "I beg your pardon?"

"That's what you are," Janine said. "A baby-splitter. That's what Harry would call you."

Mary went straight for Janine's throat. 

A moment later, when Mary slammed into the floor yet again, she realized that it must have been Molly Hooper, of all people, who had knocked her down. The thought made Mary cry. Both her hands were throbbing and one of them was swelling up to a quite frightening size. She should never have given birth. It made her weak. From the moment she first held Rachel and looked into her eyes to this moment now Mary had just been getting weaker and weaker and weaker. Now even Molly Hooper could tackle her. 

"Fucking Harry," Mary murmured, as she tried to catch her breath. "Thinks she's so fucking clever. Fuck her."

Her eyes focused on Janine's face. It was quite close, as if Janine was crouching down and peering at her.

"What?" Mary shouted.

"Present tense," Janine said, and a strange light came into her eyes. "You...said...' _thinks.'_ "

Oh fuck.

"She's dead," Mary said.

"You lie like a rug," Janine retorted. "She's here. That's why we didn't find her body. You brought Harry  _here!_ "

"Well she's got to be dead NOW!" Mary shouted up at her. Ada must have finished her. Otherwise she wouldn't have come after them.

Janine put a hand to her ear. 

"Oh God. Molly, where's the earpiece? Do you see it--"

Molly pounced on something outside Mary's field of vision.

"It's broken," Molly said, anxiously. "Just crushed. I think she fell on it."

Janine's face hardened. She got to her full height. Mary looked up at her and cursed herself for not having seen, when she first selected Janine as the mark for the Magnussen takedown, exactly how much steel there was in those eyes.

"Get up," Janine said. 

"I don't think so," Mary replied. "I'm quite comfortable on this floor. I like it here."

"Get up and take me to Harry," Janine said. 

"You know she really is dead," Mary answered. "I mean yes, she was alive when I brought her in, but last I saw her, there were two AGRA girls working on her, and--"

"Mary, GET UP!"

Maybe it was because Janine was dressed in black. Maybe it was because Janine was towering over Mary in just the way Astoria Gillian used to tower over Mary when she was a very little girl very newly named Agnes. Maybe it was because Mary's right hand was still on fire and she knew that she could never fight her way out of AGRA on her own. Maybe it was because she was curious to see what Harry Watson looked like beaten to a pulp.

For any or all of those reasons, Mary got painfully to her feet.

"This way."

END CHAPTER


	23. TO SIR WITH LOVE

**MEDICAL RETENTION CELL**

**AGRA**

The wheelchair went flying, again. As Harry threw herself forward, the wheels spun and the thing just zipped out from under her, pitching her toward the floor. She tried to head-butt Alanna as she fell, but of course she misjudged the distance. Alanna just caught her shoulders with one arm and drove a punch into Harry’s gut with the other.

Harry dropped forward on her hands and knees. Her arms trembled while she began vomiting.

“Oh disgusting,” said Alanna. “Aminta, I’m bloody fed up with this. Get the prevenarin,” Alanna called.

Aminta walked patiently to the far wall to collect the capsized wheelchair. “I have orders from Sir to do one thing, and now I have an order from you to do the opposite. Whose orders do you expect I will follow?”

“But—“

“He wants to interrogate her himself. If she’s zonked on prevenarin he can’t. Anyway I don’t want to have to explain to him why between the two of us we couldn’t subdue a sedentary middle-aged woman with no combat training or muscle tone. Neither would you, if you were smart.”

Harry heard the wheels of the chair rattle as Aminta set it down. She heard her locking the wheels.

“All right now, let’s get—“

“Behind you!” Alanna shouted.

There was a crunch of broken glass. Then the scrabbling of feet. And then a high, intense, female voice shrieking, “KYAAAAA!”

Amidst sounds of body parts thwacking into others, Harry groped for the wheelchair, using it to pull herself upright. On the other side of the room was the empty frame where the one-way mirror had been. Someone had evidently leapt through it and started laying into Aminta. At first all Harry could make out was black limbs and flying brown hair.

“KYAAA! KYA KYA KYA KYAAAAA!!!!”

Alanna took a kick to the kneecap. She let out a yelp of pain and aimed a kick at her tormentor. As the tormentor shifted round to come at Alanna from a different angle, Harry got a good look at her face.

It was Molly. That was Molly Hooper. Her hands and limbs were rigid and all the cords in her neck stood out and she was laying into Alanna with perfect accuracy, shouting “KYAAA!” every time she connected. If you looked at her face, though, it was like what the berserkers must have looked like right before they started hacking heads off. Beware the anger of Molly Hooper, Harry thought, once you release it.

Harry got to her feet, intending to help. She tried to move forward. There was an arm around her neck all of a sudden that was stopping her. It was a strong arm, and though she grabbed it and tried to do the throw, it wasn’t working.

Harry heard the sharp crack of a punch to someone’s head. The arm wrapped around Harry's neck relaxed, and slipped away. Harry heard what she assumed was Aminta’s body slump to the floor.

Molly was standing over the inert form of Alanna. Molly's hands were still stiff, the fingers pressed together in the famous “knife hand” shape. Her cheeks were burning red, but her eyes were beginning to be a bit embarrassed.

“Jesus, Molly,” Harry said. “The student has become the master.”

Molly looked down and started to go bashful again.

"Beautiful job, Molly. I mean just--just beautiful. When did you decide to make your body a weapon?"

Molly looked up, with a bit of a glare. "That's none of your business."

Harry laughed. She heard someone else laughing too. It was a beautiful musical laugh that Harry had always found unreasonably charming.

Harry turned around, slowly. And there was Janine, in a black catsuit, nonchalantly combing a strand of hair out of her face.

“Oh my God, I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Harry said.

Janine laughed again. “I don’t see myself in a harp or a halo, Harry, do you?”

“I didn’t specify _whose_ heaven,” Harry replied.

A snort from yet another person drew Harry’s attention to Mary, who appeared to be catching her breath after felling Aminta.

“And back to earth again,” Harry sighed. "You know not to trust her as far as you can throw her?"

"We know," Molly said.

"Where are the boys?" She felt her stomach lurch. "They are--they are--with you--right?"

"Of course," Janine said. "We got split up is all. They're following Rachel. Are you all right to walk, Harry?” Janine said.

Harry tested her bare feet on the floor. Her legs held up. So far so good.

“Do we have somewhere to go?” Harry answered.

“Mary says we should drop in on Sir," Janine said. "What do you think of that idea?"

"I think it's probably suicidal," Harry answered, "and also our best chance of finding Rachel."

"So let's go, then?" said Janine.

"Let's go."

***   *  *  ***

**RACHEL’S BLOG, ENTRY TEN CONTINUED**

Screaming comes easily to me and I can sustain it for quite some time. After about ten minutes of uninterrupted scream, however, your throat starts to hurt rather badly. After twenty minutes you really require a drink of water if you plan to continue. Ada was not going to allow me a drink of water. It was too bad because just as I finally gave in and went quiet, Ada brought me into a lift. It was a funny lift because it was curved, like the arc of a perfect circle, and there were doors on three sides of it—the convex side that we came in on, and the two narrow straight sides at the ends. But it was made of steel and very small, and if only I had not overtaxed my larynx, it would have been the perfect place for a very high pitched long-lasting shriek. I think I could have rendered Ada deaf or possibly mad. Temporarily at least.

Instead I am afraid I was gasping a bit. I am in case I haven’t said this yet very active and I don’t tire easily. But this building was much larger than I had imagined it to be and it took a long time for Ada to drag me down to the lift and flailing all your limbs plus your head at once does burn up a lot of energy.

So when the lift stopped and Ada carried me out of it I was not in good fettle. This accounts for my letting her just sling me down from her shoulder and plop me on my bum on the rug. It was a nice thick rug, much nicer than the rubbish we had to sit on at rug time at the New Circle School. The room I was in had the same arc shape as the lift, though it was perhaps twice as wide. It had curved walls that looked like frosted glass. There was a big desk, curved to go with the shape of the room, with a smooth glass top. There was a woman sitting behind the desk. She had long hair and a heart-shaped face and she was smiling a kind of secret smile.

Ada said, “Here you are, Anthea.”

The woman behind the desk stood up and put her hands on the desktop and leaned over it to look down at me. I suppose I should admit I had flopped down on my back and stretched my arms and legs out. I wished the AGRA uniform didn’t have long sleeves and long legs because then I could have felt the rug on them and it would have been lovely.

Anthea said, “Is she quite all right?”

I felt embarrassed so I sat up. I said, “I was only having a rest. Escaping is very tiring.”

Since Anthea was pretty much always smiling it was hard to know what she thought of anything you said.

“Thank you, Ada,” said Anthea.

The way she said it I was fairly certain that she meant for Ada to go. But Ada didn’t go.

“Is there something in particular you’re waiting for?” Anthea said.

Ada looked at her and then said, “I’d like to deliver her personally.”

“I have no doubt you would,” Anthea said. “However, Sir has given me no such instructions. You are to leave Rachel with me, and return to your regular duties. You will receive your reward through the usual channels.”

Ada said, “I’d like him to know that this was no small task.”

I thought maybe Anthea’s smile got a tiny bit bigger but it was hard to say.

“I believe he is aware of that, Ada. But I will be sure to inform him. Which other operatives did you find it necessary to involve?”

Ada, who now looked positively put out, said, “Aminta and Alanna at first. Then after Agnes made a break for it I had to bring in some muscle, so I rounded up Agatha and Ardelia. But they don’t know anything about it, really.”

Anthea said, “I would advise you not to know anything about it either.”

Ada kind of looked a bit flustered. “Understood.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

I thought about running after Ada into the lift but I decided against it. I don’t want you to think I was a coward. I mean I saw what they did to Aunt Harriet and my mother and it did occur to me that they could easily do much worse to me. But what I was thinking was that Aunt Harriet had said that the man was at the top of the chain and that meant that once I was ‘delivered’ to whoever this man was I would be talking to the person in charge. I had a better chance of finding out what was really going on and getting someone to stop it and put things right if I let myself be delivered to him. Unless he was literally a child-eating ogre like that monster with the eyes in his hands from _Pan’s Labyrinth_ , he probably would not kill me. After all if he had wanted that he could certainly have had one of the A-girls do it.

Anthea came around in front of the desk. She crouched down on the rug and stared at me.

“Sir has asked to see you,” she said. “Please come with me.”

I didn’t want to say anything to her so I didn’t. But when she stood up I stood up. She took my hand and held onto it as if it were a valuable but somewhat disgusting object. She walked me down to the glass wall and put her hand against it and said, “Anthea Guinevere Renata Allison.”

“Oh,” I said out loud.

The whole wall rotated. There was this long tall gap at one end of the room now. That was pretty cool but it wasn’ t why I said “oh.” It had just occurred to me that maybe that was what that woman had meant about my designation. They all had four names and I had only given her one.

“Don’t be afraid now,” Anthea said. “He won’t hurt you.”

She sort of put her hands behind my shoulders and gave me a little shove. I tripped forward a bit but I caught myself. The door moved shut behind me.

This Sir was standing in the center of the round room on the center of the round carpet and I am afraid I did not notice much about him because of the walls. The walls were glass on this side just like on the other side that faced Anthea’s office, but instead of frost they were covered with photos. All the way up from the floor to the top of the walls and even across the big round ceiling. And the thing was that I recognized some of them. They were pictures I’d seen at home. Pictures of my Dad and me from when I was little. Pictures of me with Aunt Harriet. Pictures of me at the Priory School and the New Circle School and the two schools before that. 

“Rachel,” said the man.

His voice was big, and much lower than my Dad’s voice. He was big too. You may have noticed if you follow my Dad’s blog at all that even though he chooses the pictures that make him look bigger he is actually quite a short man. Lolo is taller but he isn’t really _big_. This man was tall and big with legs like tree trunks and a big bald head and a big moustache with one of those little goat beards sort of dangling from it. He was standing up very straight just like my Dad always told me to stand up straight and then I never did and he would say it again and then after the third time just give up and if Aunt Harriet were there she would give him a Look and he would say all right, all right and change the subject.

“That’s my name,” I said. “Rachel Watson.”

The moustache turned up at the corners, which I assumed meant he was smiling.

“I know, Rachel,” he said. “I’ve been following your progress for a long time now. Your mother thinks you have great potential. Mothers are always soft-headed about their own children, of course. But I think she’s right about that much. Alanna says you’re an expert climber and Aminta was very impressed with your work on the skyscraper problem.”

I couldn’t help feeling a bit proud. He really did seem pleased and old men with deep voices who stand up very straight are hardly ever pleased with me.

Then I remembered, and I said, “Alanna and Aminta beat up my Aunt Harriet. I don’t care what they think.”

He stroked his beard with his big hand and somewhere behind the moustache I thought I heard a kind of chuckle.

“Don’t worry about your Aunt Harriet, Rachel. She can take care of herself.”

I said, “Aunt Harriet was not taking very good care of herself when I left.”

His big bushy reddish eyebrows drew down and he looked hard at me for a moment.

“You’re very loyal to your people, aren’t you, Rachel?” he said.

I said, “It’s the Watson way.”

I can’t really explain what his face did when I said that. It was a bit frightening to me but I was not sure why.

“And you’re proud to be a Watson, are you?” he said. He was keeping his voice friendly but I was not sure about his eyes.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I am also half Holmes, which explains why I’m clever at maths and things.”

This made him actually laugh.

“If you’re so clever, you must understand how DNA works,” he said.

I said, “That doesn’t matter. You can pass things on other ways. Lolo has passed on all kinds of things to me, like not getting on with people.”

He laughed again. It was a nice laugh and you couldn’t help but relax just a little bit. I hear it sometimes when I dream about him and even though the dream is usually scary it I still do like the laugh.

“Well truth be told, Rachel, you get a bit of that on your father’s side too. And of course your mother’s. But I think you and I are getting on well enough right now, don’t you?”

He dropped down to one knee as he said it, to look me in the eye. There was something about his smell that seemed familiar to me. I think it was shaving cream, or maybe aftershave lotion. Dad and Lolo are both very particular about shaving and they have lots of different creams and lotions and things in the bathroom and I go in there and play with them sometimes when they’re not paying attention to me.

I said, “I don’t see how we can possibly get on until you tell Alanna and Aminta and Agatha and Ardelia to stop beating up my aunt and my mother.”

He said, “You should never contradict your elders, Rachel. Show respect. If you don’t show respect you don’t deserve respect.”

I said, a bit more loudly, “I am really tired of hearing about respect and anyway you have no right to tell me what to do and if you respected anyone you would not want them beaten up which means you don’t respect my mother and I’m like my mother so then you don’t respect me either so I don’t know why you brought me here anyway!”

He got very calm and quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I brought you here because I want to help you, Rachel.”

I said, and I really tried not to let the anger out when I said it, “This is not helping me. It is really not helping at all.”

“You don’t understand it yet,” he said. “Possibly you won’t till you’re my age or even older. Children don’t know what they need. They know what they think they want but most of the time if they got it they’d only be miserable with it. Same for most adults, really. That’s the problem with the world today. Too much _listening_ and giving _choices_ and providing _alternatives_ and _accommodations._ ”

His voice made all of these things sound like they were as disgusting as a hacked-up cat hairball.

“Of course if you give a child freedom and choice and all these things they’ll scream bloody murder if you take them away. Again, same for most adults. But what they don’t understand is that it’s the choices that make them miserable. If what we wanted was what was good for us there wouldn’t be a multibillion dollar diet industry. People vote for what they want, not for what’s good for them or for the country or for the planet. They’ll always do it. No way to stop them. Nobody votes to end their own freedom or give up their own choices. But it makes you miserable, always getting your own way. The adults, well, they’re hopeless really, one does one’s best but the work never ends because they _will_ keep unraveling and picking at it if you leave it alone with them for a moment. That’s why you have to start with children. Children recognize strength. They don’t like it but they know they need it. You just have to be strong enough to keep it up. Be consistent. Maintain discipline. That’s what’s been missing from your life. That’s what’s made you miserable in every school you’ve been into so far.”

I was starting to feel quite uncomfortable. My Dad talks about discipline like this sometimes and then usually right afterwards he makes up a new rule or takes something away from me and then there’s a big fight and then after that he comes in and says I’m sorry, Rachel, I know that never works but it’s hard for me to stop doing it. And I say it’s all right even though in fact it’s not really because he obviously feels so bad about it. I really actually hate it when my Dad talks about discipline because it really makes him sound like some other person I don’t really know who probably wouldn’t like my Dad if he wasn’t living inside him.

I said, “How do you know I’ve been miserable? Why are you spying on me? What do you care? Why can’t I see my mother?”

There was a chime from his desk. He reached back and found the right button with one hand without even looking.

“Go ahead, Anthea,” he said, still keeping his eyes on me.

“Are you _sure_ you wish me to take no action regarding that earlier matter, sir? Only--”

He pushed another button and I couldn’t hear Anthea’s voice any more, though it seemed he could. He was nodding, anyway.

“Well,” he finally said. “If they reach that point, let me know. Otherwise, do not concern yourself.”

He turned back to me.

“Your mother is very talented, Rachel,” he said, quite gravely. “A real credit to AGRA and a major asset to the organization. Her work has been first-rate, of its kind. Unfortunately she is psychologically unstable and personally volatile. She isn’t suited to bringing up children. She lacks the inner convictions that produce true commitment to a belief or a course of action. I’m glad that she’s had the opportunity to get to know you. She did deserve that. But bringing you up is not a job that she’s fit for. Your father feels the same way.”

“I know that,” I said.

“Your father’s less volatile. But he doesn’t have the qualities necessary for command. He’s a soldier, not a general. He’s let you have your own way too long and now he’s not in a position to correct you. Your will is stronger than his. It’s stronger even than your Aunt Harriet’s. You need someone firmer.”

I didn’t need him to tell me who he thought was the perfect candidate for the job of taking me in hand. I only had to look at his face.

I said, “I want to go home. I want to go home _now_.”

He said, “You are home, Rachel. This is your home. I’m your family now.”

My heart is normally quite a reliable organ. But when he said that it sank. It just sank. It was like it had just given up on beating. I mean not literally because I was breathing and my blood circulated and everything. But I was inside this tiny room with no doors and it was a perfect closed circle and he was so big and I was so small and there was this word _discipline_ still in the air and I felt like it would always be there and that he was going to keep me in this room and just fill it up from floor to ceiling with _discipline discipline discipline_.

I started breathing faster. And faster and faster until I started to wonder how long I would be able to breathe at all.

END CHAPTER


	24. THE CLOVEN PINE

If Rachel had been a princess in an enchanted castle guarded by actual dragons, getting from one end of that cross-tunnel to the other couldn't possibly have been any more difficult. Without Janine to help them, John had to wait for Sherlock to disable every security barrier they hit; and though Sherlock was in fact the best amateur burglar, safecracker, hacker, and unauthorized locksmith in Europe, John could not enjoy watching him work. Many times John wished he just had a jackhammer. That was one thing Rachel had inherited from him: a strong preference for the manual override.

John's hope that it would calm him down to know Rachel was still alive and closer than ever had been utterly mistaken. When they reached the doors to the lift, John could only with difficulty stop himself from attempting to kick them down. Instead he paced the corridor, starting at the last set of doors they'd come through. Sherlock had found it necessary, for those doors, to resort to just lighting the circuit board on fire in hopes of causing a convenient fault. It certainly had; the doors were crashing into each other and rebounding back again like mad. It astonished John that nobody had noticed any of this. Or that if they had, nobody had come out to stop them.

"Sherlock," John said. "Is this a trap?"

Sherlock sat back on his heels and shot John a very aggrieved look.

"It may well  _be_ a trap; but as Rachel is the bait, we have no choice but to press on. Most traps can be sprung."

"Where does that lift go to?"

"There's a central shaft around which the whole complex is built," Sherlock said, as he stared at the keypad. "We're on the central level. In other words, John, we have reached the heart of darkness, and I fully expect that we are about to come face to face with Mr. Kurtz."

John paused a moment to drink that in.

"Look who's gone and read a classic British novel," John said. "True, it's the shortest one he could possibly have found--"

"The adventure element held my interest," Sherlock snapped. "It won't happen again."

"I believe you," John replied.

"You remember Harry in your own way, and let me remember her in mine," Sherlock retorted. "What I meant was that we are sure to find, concealed at the heart of this industrious little hive, the queen bee. Or in this case, the king."

"Sir," John murmured.

"Precisely."

Sherlock ran a hand through his hair. John wondered if he were imagining it, but he thought he could see a sprinkling of white hairs near Sherlock's temple. 

"There's no retina scanner or palmprint or keycard reader. Just this keyboard. There must be a password, known only to those with top clearance." Sherlock began ruffling his hair with both hands, as if trying to massage ideas out of his cranium. "The password has to be easy to remember but it can't be common knowledge. It has to be something most operatives couldn't guess but it can't be anything  _too_ intimate because it's shared with the people closest to him and with the best opportunities to take him out." He let out a sigh. "Old operation names. We could try that. They'd be known only to those with clearance but they'd contain no new information."

"But Sherlock, we don't know what they name their operations."

"We know they had one called Polluxfall," Sherlock said grimly, keying it in.

Nothing happened.

"Castorfall then," Sherlock said, stabbing away at the keys.

Still nothing. Sherlock was starting to look a bit wild about the eyes.

"What about..." John said. "That one Mycroft was working on. The one Irene and Moriarty spoiled for him. With the plane and the corpses."

"Coventry?" Sherlock said.

John winced a bit at the sound of the word. He'd never told Sherlock that for him it had a quite different meaning.

"That was an MI6 code name," Sherlock mused. "Still. Lady Smallwood said that they did sometimes collaborate, just before she became utterly craven and vile."

Sherlock input the letters.

There was a click. The lift doors slid open.

"That was too easy," John said.

"Everything about this mission has been either too easy or too hard," Sherlock said. "It's a topsy-turvy world here at the Abandoned Girls' Reclamation Academy."

Sherlock leaned over and punched one of the lift buttons. 

"When the lift doors open," John said, as they felt the lift ascend, "we'll need to come out fighting."

They looked at each other. It had not been so very long since they had shared that lift ride at the Drake. John felt as if he had become an entirely different person over the past twenty-four hours. Perhaps Sherlock felt the same way. And yet whoever they had become, they had undergone the transformation together. They were more interlocked, more welded together, than ever, perhaps even because the shape into which they had fused was so different from anything they had ever known.

*   *    *   *

**SOMEWHERE IN THE SEA OFF THE COAST OF SUSSEX**

It would have been such a lovely night, Lady Smallwood thought, if I were only here with someone. The sea was calm, and moonlight spilled liquid and shining along the peaks and facets of the dark waves that trembled around the creaky old wooden dinghy in which she sat. When she looked to the northeast she could see the white cliffs of Beachy Head, giving off their spectral reflection of the moon's light. It would have been perfect bliss to spend a night like this with her husband, back when they were young together, before middle age and public life complicated everything for both of them. They would have lain on the floor of the boat--he'd have laid his old duffel coat over the boards to soften them for her--and held hands, and drifted. And he might have declaimed some verse about the sea, from Shakespeare or Coleridge. He was never embarrassed about his love for poetry. He would just shout it into the darkness, with the same dramatic emphasis he brought to his political speeches. It would have been a night to remember.

Mycroft had no use for poetry. But it would have been perfect in its own way, to be here tonight with him. They wouldn't be holding hands in the moonlight and drifting. He'd be helping her on with the scuba gear, checking gauges, running over in his polite and deferential and yet curiously arousing murmur the vectors and depths and tides and the dimensions of the inlet and the optimal placement of the small round metal spheres weighing down the waterproof sack that now depended from her shoulders like an awkward and lumpy baby carrier. Shared danger. As romantic, in its own way, as shared moonlight.

At her wrist, where she had tucked it under the sleeve of her wetsuit, she felt a momentary buzz from the burner phone.

She removed and flipped it open. It was a text. It was from the expected source. It contained the expected three words. Two of which were "DEATH STAR."

Lady Smallwood texted back her reply. She removed the battery from the burner phone and tossed it over the side of the dinghy. She tossed the phone itself over the other. She checked the gauges on her own tanks, the straps on her own swim fins, settled her own mask and mouthpiece. She perched her hips on the edge of the boat. She felt the gunwale pressing through the thin flesh, right on the bone. It would have been so much easier twenty years ago, or even ten. But this was the place, and now was the time, and she was the one.

She pushed off with her fins, flipping backward into the dark water with a splash that wouldn't have alarmed a dolphin. Twelve feet down and she switched on her headlamp. Its beam spread out through the water, drawing her onward toward the chalky shore.

*   *   *   *

Janine caught Mary's shoulder as she was heading toward the retina scanner outside the western cross-tunnel. 

"Not so fast, Agent Access Revoked," Janine said. "Allow me."

Mary's resentment was only inflamed by her dispassionate appreciation of the fact that Janine would have made an outstanding AGRA girl. She had the ideal body, the ideal personality, even the beginnings of fluidity. She'd wondered sometimes if Magnussen appreciated that too. He had seemed at times to be grooming Janine to become a kind of poor man's Anthea.

The door slid open. Mary had to bite back a burst of irritation. That Annabeth should have been given admin level 3 clearance was painfully unjust. Her incompetence was simply scandalous. And yet she had managed to keep the support of Alicia Gertie, the Admin 5 who had ruled the roost until Anthea deposed her. Sir appreciated her Annabeth least enough to stop Anthea from actually turfing her, though she had managed to get her posted to farm duty. There were many speculations about how Annabeth had made herself indispensable. The old girls used to gossip that all of Annabeth's talent was in her tongue. 

"Everybody in," said Janine, waving them on. "Shoo, shoo, hurry up hurry up. Harry, are you all right?"

"Should have nicked Ardelia's shoes," Harry said. Her bare feet were clearly hurting her, and the two AGRA goons had taken the splint off her right wrist, which Harry now kept cradled in her other arm. It must be just about as painful as Mary's crushed hand; but as Harry and Mary had become locked in a silent and deadly competition to see who could be the butchest, both were stoically ignoring their pain. 

Access to the cross-tunnel that John and Sherlock had taken was, of course, forever blocked to them now because of the blast doors. Mary had taken them right round to the other side of the complex, to the mirror-image cross-tunnel that led to the mirror-image lift. That lift was supposed to bypass the Not Actually Oval Office and go straight up to the turfing room. In fact, if you had the password, you could get it to stop on Sir's floor. And the doors would open at the side, just as they did on the official lift. But you didn't come out into Anthea's office. You came out into Sir's private quarters.

The secret backstairs entrance. Well. It was supposed to be a secret. No individual who ever went in that entrance had ever been known to talk about it. And yet the knowledge of that entrance circulated freely, passed from generation to generation via some sort of collective consciousness. If only the knowledge of the password circulated along with it. It changed frequently, that password. Sir never lingered too long over any one AGRA girl. 

"The lift does stop at the right floor," Mary said, "but you need a password and I don't know it."

Molly patted the long, narrow pocket sewn along the thigh seam of her dark trousers. It made a clank.

"It will be all right," she said. "I've some experience with this sort of thing. Greg does love the manual override."

*   *   *   *

**INNER OFFICE RING**

**AGRA**

By mutual agreement, Sherlock leapt first. He bounded through the lift doors as soon as they had opened wide enough to admit him. Just as he landed, he heard John scramble out behind him. There was the familiar click of the safety as the gun came to rest, cocked and ready, in John's outstretched hands.

There were two people in the room. They were in profile, the woman behind the curved desk and the man on the convex side of it. The woman was Anthea. The man was about half a foot taller than she was, bending over confidentially to discuss something with her. He was in his sixties at least, perhaps older, bald as an egg but with a moustache and goatee. Powerful man in spite of his age. Somewhat stocky build. Something familiar about the posture, the incline of the head, the way he seemed to be drawing toward the beautiful woman smiling up at him without actually moving his body or entering her space. It was like something he had seen years ago. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. He could see no practical application for this memory, even if he could recover it; but somehow it seemed very important to find it.

John's voice rang out clearly and, Sherlock thought, admirably under control. "Step away from the desk and put your hands in the air! Both of you!"

They both looked toward him. Anthea, infuriatingly, wore the same self-satisfied and slightly bored smile that she always had when she was working for Mycroft. Or pretending to work for him. Sherlock was still trying to work out whether Anthea had taken Mycroft in too, or whether he had known, and tried to play her, and been bested.

The man's expression was also masked, partly by the enormous mustache. But there was a kind of movement of the jaw, a straightening of the back, that indicated--not astonishment, but recognition.

The next thing Sherlock heard was John taking a breath. It was an alarming breath. A breath that seemed to get trapped halfway down his throat and stifle him. It evoked, with lacerating precision, that moment at the Landmark. That horrifying moment when Sherlock finally saw John recognize him. 

"You," John gasped. 

It was a painful, half-stifled, heartrending sound, nearly throttled with fear and anger. Sherlock could not afford to take his eyes off the adversary, but it was killing him not to be able to see John's face. Something had suddenly gone badly, unexpectedly, unimaginably wrong. The wave Sherlock always felt at his back when he had John covering him, that great tide of confident courage that had buoyed them both up through so many troubled waters, had ebbed away. There was nothing moving between them now but that frigid gust of terror.

"Y..." John lost the sound, took another painful breath, began again. "Y-you..."

The man shut the folder he'd been peering into with a snap and laid it on the glass top of the curved desk, near the large cylindrical mug that was giving off that bitter smell of forgotten coffee.  

"Either use that revolver or put it away, John," said the man. "It's not a toy."

The voice. The mustache. The shape of the jaw. The way the whole room seemed to reel around it, as if suffused with John's own sweaty nausea. There was only one man it could be. Only one man whose sudden appearance after years and years of painful absence could do this to John.

The memory of that moment at the Landmark stabbed Sherlock's heart like a shard from a broken mirror. Sherlock saw in his mind John's stricken face, heard Mary's outraged gasp. Sherlock fancied that all of that anger--well, the anger she would have actually felt had she ever actually had a single genuine feeling for John--the anger that Mary _should_ have felt at that moment, as she watched the man who had wrecked her lover's life suddenly spring out thin air without warning and expect John to take it in stride--had come to live in his own breast.

"Come now," said the man, in his hectoring and yet maddeningly familiar voice. "Put it down. Put it down and stop stammering and at least pretend you're a grown man having a serious conversation."

John said nothing. Sherlock had to deduce his response from the sound of John's tragically erratic breathing. Which suddenly became more than Sherlock could stand.

Sherlock turned toward the old man, who was still glaring at John as if he expected him to roll over and show his soft underbelly at an moment. And Sherlock heard himself, now, roaring out the exact words Mary had said to him that night.

"Do you have  _any_ idea what you've done to him?"

The man turned a cold eye on him. Sherlock noticed that Anthea, astonishingly, had entirely lost her smile. Sir couldn't see that. But Sherlock noted, for future use at a time when his entire being was not consumed with protective rage, that Anthea had no idea what was happening at this moment. Whatever plan  _she_ believed she was executing, this anagnorisis had not been part of it.

Anthea did not actually know who Sir was. The honorific was all the identity he had ever had within the world of AGRA. Sherlock's hypothesis was that this had not been true at MI6. Part of his brain was itching to confirm this. The rest of his brain was merely itching to put his hands round the old man's neck and throttle him.

"It's what I haven't done to him that worries me," said the old man, bitterly. "Never made a man of him. Wasn't for lack of trying."

"You sh...SHUT UP!" John's voice was shaking; Sherlock could only hope John's hands weren't. "Don't you...fucking..." John broke off with a kind of strangled cry. Sherlock couldn't help glancing back. 

In that brief glimpse of John's lined face crumpled up and quivering with childhood pain, Sherlock felt a surge of fury which was, in the situation, extremely counterproductive and dangerous. He struggled to contain it, and to turn away from John's agony to keep his eyes on the immediate threat.

"Thought running the AGRA gauntlet might finally do the trick," said the old man. "You'd have to have a lot of fight in you just to get here. I was looking forward to it," he said, and for the first time Sherlock could hear his advanced age, a plaintive note under all the bluster. "Seeing you all grown up at last. And look at you. It's disappointing. Very disappointing. Harriet's a better man than you are. So's Rachel, come to that, despite your lack of discipline."

John let out a noise of pain. Sherlock's next speech was an involuntary reflex.

"Of course you never made him a man," Sherlock growled, knowing he was allowing himself to be distracted but unable to stop. "You never  _made him_ anything. John Watson  _made_ himself without any help from  _you_."

"None of this is your business, Mr. Holmes," said the old man, witheringly.

"It is my business," Sherlock fired back. "As an internationally-reknowned practitioner of the science of deduction, it pains me inexpressibly to imagine for a moment that you might go to your grave under the grievous misapprehension that even _one_ of the things that are good and brave and fine about your _son_  derives from  _you_ and your  _discipline!_ " _  
_

Anthea's eyes lit with the glow of revelation.

"Nor can I stand idly by while you pretend that you drew Rachel into this noxious warren simply to construct some sort of remedial training course for insufficiently masculine boys," Sherlock spat at him. Fresh anger suffused Sherlock's chest with every word he launched in the old man's direction. "That deathmobile in Chicago must have been your idea; you wouldn't have approved anything so outlandish if it had been proposed by a subordinate. It may be that Mary was the only one who ever truly wished John _dead._  But we were never meant to find this place. We were never meant to find Rachel. _You_ were going to be all the father she needed, world without end amen."

In his peripheral vision, Sherlock saw John stalking forward, the gun still outstretched. His face was a mess, but his hands were steady.

"You disappeared," John said. His voice was low and roughened as if by crying. "You vanished into  _thin air_ when I was eleven years old. You said you were doing your duty to queen and country." John's voice broke a bit on 'duty' but he was holding it together. "And all that time you were here? In your little underground empire? The assassin factory? With the assembly-line names and the brainwashing and all those little skulls under the turf up at Devil's Dyke Farms?"

"Not the entire time, John," Sherlock said. "In 1982, Henry Watson was posted as a judge to Northern Ireland as part of a secret tribunal system used to dispose of accused IRA members. Within a year he had distinguished himself for his zeal, even among a cadre of secret judges quite willing to pass sentences which no legitimate court could have passed and which no legitimate justice system could have carried out. He became so very unpopular among the republican set that he was forced to go underground, at which point--Mycroft  _told me at the time_ \--MI6 lost track of him."

John kept his eyes trained on his father. But Sherlock knew the fresh burst of anger was meant for him alone.

"You knew where he was," John said. "And you never told me."

"I didn't know where he _was._ I knew where he'd been in 1982. I didn't inform you because it wouldn't have helped you," Sherlock said. "It told me nothing you didn't really already know, save the fact that your father had been involved in a covert operation which became so egregiously brutal that even Mycroft couldn't speak of it without blushing. It was long ago, John," he said, and the pleading note was now sounding loud and clear. "It was just after you came to live with me. Mycroft put together a dossier on you. Then he left the file in a very vulnerable spot and let me think I'd hacked into it. Because of course if he'd given it to me, then, I'd only have tried to make him eat it."

John's lips compressed. He nodded, curtly, once.

"Right," John said, taking a firmer grip on the gun and sighting along it. "So. You left us all to go play judge, jury, and executioner, and then when you were driven underground...you decided you liked it so well, you were never coming back."

"When you get as far underground as I was, John," said the old man, "they don't _let_ you come back."

"And you had Rachel brought here, what? Because you were lonely?"

"Because you are  _ruining_ that child!" the old man shouted. "She's a girl of spirit with a strong will and a phenomenal brain. There's no limit to what she might achieve if she's brought up properly but she needs a firm hand and iron discipline and you can't give her either. You're spoiling her just like your mother spoiled you. This is where she belongs. This is what she was made for."

Sherlock felt chills spider from his brain down his spine as the deductions began to link themselves together.

John, this time, was not much slower on the uptake. He looked as if he was witnessing the opening of the seventh seal.

"Oh my God," John whispered. "Oh my God. Mary. The whole marriage. It wasn't about Mycroft at all."

The old man sighed.

"If any of our field operatives could have taken Mycroft out," he conceded, "it would have been Agnes. I had hopes. But Mycroft knew AGRA too well. He couldn't be got to using the typical methods. It takes an inside job for someone like Mycroft, doesn't it, Anthea?"

Anthea resumed her habitual half-smile. 

"Yes it does, Sir," she said.

Sherlock looked at her, and felt the fires of hatred burn once more. He tried to douse them. It was important for Sherlock to retain full control of his faculties. John obviously could not be relied on to do so.

"So if Mary got to Mycroft, well and good; and if she didn't, at least she'd accomplish your own private mission," Sherlock said, bitingly. "Grandchildren."

"Never thought it would get as far as that," said the old man. "No idea Mary was even fertile. Just wanted John to move on. Get on with things. Have a normal life. He was a mess. Moping, for a year and a half, over a friend. A mate. Not even a wife. Thought he might die just of being soft. Send in one of the girls, remind him he's still a man. Worked like a dream. Better than I hoped. Never thought I would have a grandchild," he said, the quaver returning to his voice as he stroked his jaw with one hand. "Harriet a barren field, John mucking about playing soldier and then playing detective. Never imagined Agnes could be so disobedient. But wasn't it wonderful," he said, and Sherlock could almost swear his eyes were watering. "Had to burn Agnes, of course. Massive violation of protocol. Can't let people see you making exceptions, very bad for discipline. Thought you'd stick with her anyway, let Agnes get her through all the baby food and nappies and then--very disappointed in you there, John. _Very_ disappointed."

"And then...what?" John demanded. "You swoop in and take Rachel off to your select boarding school for child assassins? What was her AGRA name going to be?"

The old man seemed almost pleased by the question. 

"I thought Adelaide Ginny," he said. "After your great-aunt Virginia."

"I don't believe this," John said, slowly. "How could you do this to Rachel? How could you do it to  _me? "_

"John," Sherlock shouted. "Don't even ask. Don't ask him anything about why he didn't treat you better or why he couldn't love you more. The only question worth asking right now is--"

"I did EVERYTHING!" 

Sherlock had been glad at first to hear John find his voice. But this was becoming alarming. It was as if John had completely forgotten their original purpose. John was trying to make an argument that would have been futile even before thirty years had rendered it moot. 

"I saw what you did to Harry because she wasn't obedient. I thought well that's what fathers deserve, isn't it, obedience. That's reasonable. I'll be reasonable. I did  _everything_ you wanted. Everything you asked of me. You were never even  _in_ combat!" John shouted, gesturing with the gun in a very disquieting way. "You just  _talked_ about it, you  _drooled_ over it, the uniforms and the precision movements and the chain of command and the  _discipline._ I actually went to war. To make you proud of me. And you weren't even  _there!_ You didn't even  _know!"_

"Oh, I knew, John," said the old man. "I was watching. I was proud of you. Sad to see you give it up, though. Thought you had more persistence."

John stared at him. "I was shot. I didn't give it up, I was sent home to recuperate  _because I got shot._ "

Sherlock would have given an entire armful of heroin to have Harry alive and with them at this moment. This battle was being fought on territory entirely unfamiliar to him and he did not know how to drag John to safety. It was as if John had returned to his eleven-year-old world, in which neither Sherlock nor Rachel existed. Harry would have known what to do.

"You could have re-upped," John's father said. "Might have made something of yourself after a while. Instead you became a magician's assistant."

The noise of outrage that came from John's throat raised the hairs on the back of Sherlock's neck. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. Sherlock had a father of course. But the dim yet decent man who had been continually bedeviled and outmaneuvered by his two smarter sons, and yet had always managed to let them know that they could come home to him whenever things got too dark and dragony out there on their intellectual voyages, seemed to belong to an entirely different species of father. This...thing...that was drawing John into this maelstrom of pain and self-doubt was hardly like a man at all. He might as well be a hurricane, or a panther, or _It_. It. A giant pulsing brain, crushing any thoughts opposed to it by the sheer force of its dominance. Seeking to infiltrate and absorb forever the little boy who knew its malice but could not refuse its invitation.

"It never mattered, did it?" John shouted. "And it never will matter! I will _never_ be good enough for you!"

Anthea was staring at the old man. She was wholly fascinated. The old man, himself, had eyes only for John. Sherlock began edging out of his field of vision, toward the glass-topped desk.

"It's a curious thing," said John's father, looking at John with a kind of bewildered pity. "You want them to obey. They  _have_ to obey. You have to teach them to obey. And yet when they do obey, it's disappointing," he said. "It's the disobedient ones, the rogues, the ones you can't break--those are the ones you respect. Those are the ones you love. I'm sure you know that now."

"You son of a bitch," John said. 

Sherlock glanced sideways at the array of buttons under the touchscreen desktop. He had long settled in his mind that the central space, the one behind the convex glass wall, must be Sir's personal lair. He was nearly certain that this was where Rachel had been stowed while the old man came out to play out this long-anticipated reunion with his estranged son. It had struck Sherlock immediately that the two figures they confronted upon emerging from the elevator had been posed, as if they had just taken their marks before the curtain went up on the denouement. What they should do, right now, was compel the old man or Anthea to get them into that space. But John had the only gun, and John was currently being enclosed in a cloven pine by a very powerful mage. 

There was only thing that could beat  _It_. 

Sherlock found what he was mostly certain was the intercom button. He pressed it and held it down.

"You BASTARD!" John shouted. "You never loved either of us!"

As John drew breath, an electronically mediated voice crackled out of the speakers concealed under the desktop.

"Daddy!"

John's whole body shivered. Sherlock himself felt his knees buckle at the sound of Rachel's voice.

"Rachel!" John shouted, turning away from his father toward the sound of her voice. "We're here! Where are you?"

"Daddy! DADDY! I'm sorry, Daddy! I'm sorry I ran away! Take me home!"

It was amazing, the speed of John's transformation. And he didn't even move, really. Just steadied the gun, lowered his brows, clenched his jaw, and said, quite calmly, to the old man, "Let her out."

"John," said the old man, "let's talk about this. I don't want to have to hurt you. But I cannot let you take Rachel out of here."

"LET ME GO!" Rachel's voice screamed. "I HATE this place! LET ME GO!"

"Rachel, it's Lolo," Sherlock said, before anyone else could talk. "Take a deep breath and focus, we need your brain to help us, all right? Tell us where you are."

"I'm in this big round room with all glass walls with pictures on them."

Anthea made a sudden movement. John pointed the revolver at her.

"We're on the other side of the wall, Rachel," Sherlock said. "There's no visible door but there must be a way in. Tell us how you got in."

"Anthea put her hand on the wall and said her name. All four parts of it. And then the wall moved."

"Thank you, Rachel," Sherlock said. 

"Lolo, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," Sherlock said. "We love you, Rachel. We'll be in to you as soon as we can."

"Hurry, Lolo!"

"Right then," John said, staring down the barrel of the gun at his father. "Anthea, open it."

Anthea shook her head, still smiling.

"Open it before I shoot him."

The old man looked at Anthea. "Well, you heard the boy. Do as he says."

And in the instant that it took Sherlock to think,  _they are colluding,_ Anthea leapt forward and kicked the gun out of John's hand. 

It killed Sherlock to take his finger off that intercom button. But someone had to collect the gun. And someone had to deal with Anthea. And someone had to punch John's father, very hard, in the head. Many times.

*  *   *   *

Molly squatted on the shag rug by the mahogany-veneered door. She was putting the final touches on what appeared to Harry to be a very tiny and almost dainty little bomb, which she planned to use to blow open the lock that nobody seemed to know how to pick. Mary was looking over her shoulder, kibitizing of course, and Janine was making sure Mary kept a safe distance. Harry, who did not possess any aptitudes that were of any practical use in this precise situation, was trying to settle her nerves by thinking about how creepy it was that the communicating door from the Inner Office Ring led straight into Sir's bedroom. 

And what a depressing bedroom, too. Nothing but dark wood and rough textiles. A bedspread the color and texture of burlap, a drinks cabinet, the inevitable flat screen on which to play films or games or perhaps just watch surveillance video, and a faux-wood nightstand holding an empty tumbler and an old tin box.

Harry took a step closer.

The box was the only old thing in the entire room. Dented, and scratched, especially around the metal keyhole. 

"Stop  _bothering_ me, Mary!" Molly hissed. "I'm doing it right. Just leave me alone."

"I just don't think you have enough bang for the job there," Mary said.

"We're not blowing up the whole place, Mary," Janine said. "Much as we'd all like to."

Harry reached out to touch it. Her fingers read the letters that had been scratched into it with the point of an old Swiss army knife.  _John Watson's secret box._

Harry felt suddenly very cold, and unable to move.

"That's it then," Molly said. "Stand back, there'll be a bit of flying debris. Three...two...one..."

Harry grabbed the handle of the box. She swung around. She saw Molly, Mary, and Janine backing up from the door. She almost opened her mouth to say  _No, my God, you don't know what's in there._

But then she mastered it, and started running, the battered tin box swinging from her good hand.

"Harry, look out, you're too close!" Molly called.

There was an anticlimactic little pop, and a small cloud of smoke and dust. 

Harry burst through the door. In the odd, curved, and narrow room she entered, Sherlock and one of the AGRA girls were having a quite balletic fight over by the curved desk that dominated most of the room. On the thick carpet lay an old man, upon whose gut John was kneeling as he pushed the old man's chest down with one hand and punched him in the head with the other.

Harry said the first thing that came into her head.

"John! Don't kill him! The Furies will never leave you alone!"

John looked up. Harry didn't think that her admittedly incongruous reference could quite account for his shocked expression.

"Harry?" John shouted. "HARRY!"

The old man surged up. He grabbed John by the collar and rolled him over. Oh God, Harry thought, as the old man reached back with one fist, he was winning and now I've ruined it. All these times I've tried to protect John from him and all I ever did was make it worse.

Harry swung at him with her left arm. The bottom of the tin box slammed with a clang into her father's head.

As the old man tried to shake it off, Mary materialized, apparently out of thin air, and fetched their father a quite punishing kick in the stomach. Molly and Janine swarmed past the confused tangle of struggling bodies to get to the other AGRA girl. 

"Open the office, Anthea," Mary shouted. Mary was kneeling on the carpet with one arm around Sir's neck, slowly squeezing his windpipe tighter and tighter. "If you want me  _not_ to kill him, then open it."

"No," Anthea said. "You'll always be AGRA. You can't kill Sir."

"I bloody well can!" Mary roared back.

"Harry!" Sherlock shouted, as he blocked one of the AGRA girl's punches. "Get the intercom, it's the red button on the extreme lower right-hand corner!"

Harry hauled herself up to the desktop and pushed the button. "Hello?"

"Aunt Harriet!" 

It was Rachel's voice.

"Rachel," Sherlock shouted, "what's Anthea's full name?"

The reply crackled back. "Anthea Guinivere Renata Allison."

"Molly, grab her legs," Sherlock called out. "Janine, come here."

Harry went back to her father. She squatted down to look at his face. It was very red. The eyes were beginning to bulge. His breath was becoming very shallow.

"Mary, stop," Harry said.

Mary's reply was eerily calm. "No."

"Mary, that's John's father, that's Rachel's grandfather. Stop."

Mary said, "Nobody's ever stopped him."

"John," Harry said. "John. Help. JOHN!"

Harry looked up. John wasn't near them. He was standing at the other end of the office. He and Molly had grappled Anthea around the hips and ankles and hoisted her up sideways. Sherlock and Janine were holding Anthea's palm flat against the glass, while Anthea's other arm struck at their heads. 

"Now!" Sherlock grunted.

Janine said, "Anthea Guinivere Renata Allison."

The glass wall began to move.

"Oh my God."

Mary rushed toward the opening in the wall, letting the old man's head drop onto the carpet.

Harry knelt by him, listening to his breath rasping in and out. He was so much older now. Such loose skin around his jaw. So many visible veins. Still big and still strong. But no longer the man she remembered.

There were so many people at the entrance, it seemed Rachel couldn't possibly get out. And then Harry saw her actually crawling over the massed heads and arms of the whole throng, and sliding down John's back to land on the rug.

John turned round, kneeling down. Rachel threw her arms around him. Sherlock administered a final punch to Anthea, then threw himself into the embrace from the other side. The three of them clung to each other, all of them weeping, quite loudly. 

Molly and Janine dragged Anthea onto the rug. Anthea was conscious, but she was having second thoughts about returning to battle.

Harry looked down at the face of a man she had never thought she would see again.

"Harriet," her father whispered. "You saved me." He smiled. "You were always my favorite, you know. Always hardest on your favorites."

Harry had wondered, sometimes, what she would say to her father, if she ever saw him again. Had rehearsed, over the years, long speeches in which she listed all the ways in which he had warped her life, all the ways he had been cruel to John. Many of them were quite eloquent, she thought, sure to wring tears from any bystander. But that was in a fantasy world, where her father was capable of listening to people. Capable of understanding when he'd hurt someone, and of wanting not to do it any more. For  _this_ man--the man who had run so far along the thread of his life without ever valuing or even perceiving all the things that made children or family or life itself precious--she found them all worthless.

Harry got to her feet. The tin box was there on the carpet. The impact had warped its shape. Instead of punching her father, Harry grabbed the box and banged it with all her strength against the console.

The lid popped open. It sailed back into the room, at the end of Harry's arm, upside down, with the lid wagging. 

Nothing fell out of it. It was empty.

Harry threw the tin box down onto her father's chest.

"Goodbye, Daddy," Harry said. 

Her father rolled over, flinging the box off, trying to draw in enough air to stand up. Harry left him to it.

The little trio was still there in a heap on the rug, hugging and crying and apologizing to each other. Mary crouched just outside the circle, waiting in vain for anyone to invite her in. Molly was standing watch over Anthea. Janine was next to her, looking at Sherlock and brushing away a tear.

Harry became aware of a sound that had not been there before. It was a low, booming, blaring sound, intermittent like a heartbeat, so loud it made the floor vibrate.

Anthea sat bolt upright. Mary's head craned to look at the ceiling, then all round the room.

"What?" Harry demanded. "What is it?"

Anthea said, "It's the fluid barrier alarm."

"What's a--" Molly began, but Mary said, "No. You're not serious."

A new, higher-pitched, bleating sound began throbbing. 

"And there goes the flood warning," Anthea said, with a sigh.

"What the bloody hell," Mary said.

Anthea dragged herself rather painfully to the desk. The longer she studied it the more upset she began to look.

"The fluid barrier's down," Anthea snapped. "Complete containment failure. The intake channel's flooding. There are warning lights all the way along the..." She put her hands up to her temples. "Oh my God. There's water on the lower level. There's water in the complex. Someone's blown up the waterworks."

As Anthea and Mary exchanged horrified looks, Janine said, "So...that's bad then?"

Harry heard her father getting to his feet. Before he spoke, yet another electronic wail rent the air, repeating again after about five seconds. As the pulse repeated, Harry saw doors open at both ends of the curved office. The circular wall began to rotate again. 

"That'll be the evac alert," Anthea said. 

"Go," Mary shouted. "Go. All the interior barriers shift to open once the evac alert sounds. We can get to the escape shafts ahead of the rest of them if we hurry. GO!"

John and Sherlock grabbed Rachel's hands. She refused to move.

"What about the other children?" she said.

"The evac team will get them out, Rachel," Mary said. "We drill for this. Let's GO!"

"Harry!" Janine shouted, as the little group ran toward the exit. "Come on!"

Harry felt her father's hand on her shoulder. She knocked his hand away and ran after the others.

END CHAPTER


	25. HELL OR HIGH WATER

**DEVIL'S DYKE ORGANIC FARMS**

Sally Donovan had never liked sheep. Or cows, chickens, basically any type of farm animal. Watching children's television programming in the unairconditioned flat where her mother had raised her and her brothers, Sally had conceived an aversion, probably driven by resentment, to bucolic settings and anthropomorphic pigs. It had seemed unfair to her that there were animals on this island that had greener pastures and purer air than many of the humans she knew.

Later, of course, Sally had come to realize that this was not actually true for most farm animals, and that those little barns and pastures and chicken coops were simply images that kept perpetuating themselves on the airwaves long after the actuality they once reflected had died. Things like Devil's Dyke Organic Farms were the exception. A very self-conscious exception, so intentional and in a way dishonest that it should not have been so very much of a shock to Sally to discover, inside a very picturesque pen apparently used to house the sheep that were now straying at will throughout the park, the most unsettling crime scene she had ever investigated.

Skies were dark above them, but the pen was now brilliantly illuminated by enormous artificial lights. Gleaming caution tape traced an irregular ellipsis outside the pen. Two crime scene investigation teams had been called in from different cities and were working at opposite ends. So far none of the bodies had been removed. These bodies had been buried--or rather punched into the earth, propelled from below by some sort of inverted pile driver--vertically. From an examination of the most recent body turned up so far--that of a five year old girl--it appeared that each body was encased, before 'burial,' in a tube made of a rigid but biodegradable material, which was then filled with soil. The tube was covered with a domed cap made of the same material. The chief investigator's best guess was bamboo, but it would have to be confirmed, as most of these casings were in an advanced state of decay. It was the chief investigator's theory that the infernal machine, at whose operations they could right now only guess, first dug out a hole, disposed of the dirt, then planted the body, packed in its capsule, in the empty space. 

Preliminary estimates put the total at this site at thirty-five. Since getting the all-clear from Sherlock, Sally had sent other crime scene teams, along with some regular officers, to the other farms containing the five other greenhouses whose reflective roofs had caught the attention of that airborne tourist. She was waiting to hear how many of them had similar crime scenes. So far, the crime scene teams were waiting for the regular officers to take the farm's occupants--at each of them, a pair of women between the ages of 20 and 40--into custody. It was proving to be quite an ordeal, as none of these women could be persuaded to surrender voluntarily. Except for the two Lestrade had shown her, with the pride of a big game hunter, still unconscious inside Harry's car.

Sally looked around at the three men who were scanning the turf, placing markers down wherever they discovered a suspicious bump. The hum of the generators, the buzz of the electric lights, the sound of blades slicing into the turf, the exposed dark patches arranging themselves in that honeycomb shape--Sally had the impression, suddenly, of being trapped inside an enormous beehive. She shivered, and left the pen. 

As she ducked under the caution tape she was accosted by Lestrade, coming back from his investigation of the greenhouse. 

"What do you think?" she called.

"I think we should get bomb disposal out here," he said. "The stuff they've used is stable enough and some of the wiring's actually deteriorated so much I don't think all the charges would go even if you did set off the trigger. But we are essentially working on a site with a large unexploded bomb in the middle."

"How big?"

Lestrade put his hands in his pockets, looked out at the darkened greenhouse, and shrugged.

"Bigger than a breadbox, smaller than a car bomb," he said. "Obviously the point is to blow to kingdom come anyone attempting to enter the greenhouse. Doubt it would do much more. Course the greenhouse itself would turn pretty deadly," Lestrade added, with a flicker of enthusiasm. "Broken glass flying everywhere. Wonder if there's actually anything in it except for..."

The reason Lestrade had trailed off, and the reason that work in the sheep pen was beginning to stop as everyone downed tools and stood up, was that the greenhouse had begun to glow. 

At first it was a diffused and bleached-out light, making the translucent panes flicker weakly. The thing reminded Sally of nothing so much as a huge glow-worm, flashing away in the grass. But the light became whiter, brighter, stronger, as they watched. It burst, finally, through the greenhouse roof, rising in a spectral column until it dissipated in the dark sky.

Lestrade whistled. He was in fact, Sally realized after a few seconds, whistling the opening of the theme from the  _X-Files._

She spun around on him, ready to say something about there being a time and a place, but Lestrade was already growling into that damn earpiece. "Golf Sierra to Hotel Whiskey, what is going on down there? Are you being abducted by aliens? Shall we fetch a tractor beam?"

"No," came Sherlock's voice, over the earpiece. "But you will require a slightly larger van."

*   *   *   * 

  **AGRA**

**ESCAPE SHAFT #3**

 

Mary watched John, Sherlock, Molly, Janine, and Harry just stand there, on the floor of the climbing space, with their necks craned upward for all the words like baby birds, watching the blackout shield open over the airshaft. Normally the blackout shield was opened after sunrise, while the children were at breakfast. The light shafts were really for them; they were all given massive vitamin D supplements, but experience had finally taught the admins that for growing children there was really no substitute for actual sunlight. They spent hours in these shafts, thinking they were playing, when in fact they were learning to scale buildings.

There was no sunlight now, of course. Just a vague gray haze. They must have an awful lot of lights on at Devil's Dyke farms. 

"Mary," John said, sharply. "What's next?"

There he was, as short as ever, balder than before. Rachel's arms clung to his torso, her legs wrapped round his waist, her head on his shoulder. Rachel had her eyes squeezed tight shut, as if she never wanted to see anything in AGRA again. Including her own mother.

Mary could hear a vague rumble from below. She knew it was the evacuation in progress. It would not be long before this place was swarmed with children, teachers, and admins. There were four hundred people in this complex and six escape shafts. This drill was nearly as familiar to them all as the drill for meals or for playtime. As long as the water wasn't rising  _too_ fast, they should all be able to get out. Mary wasn't worried about that. She was worried about what would happen afterward.

Well. Whatever it was, her chances were better on the surface than they were down here.

She walked over to the portion of the wall where, in the event of an evacuation, a sliding steel door opened to reveal the escape hatch release lever. It was there, painted bright red and labeled. It was a large metal lever, very satisfying to hold. She'd seen it at every drill, of course; but she'd never actually had the chance to throw it.

Mary took hold of the bar and slammed the lever down. Her crushed right hand throbbed excruciatingly; but it was good to know it could still actually grasp things. And it was cathartic to feel the resistance give way, hear the clang as it fell into the open position. Mary almost felt like putting it back to 'closed' just so she could throw it again. She had never wanted to leave this place as badly as she wanted to do it now.

Fucking Sir.

Mary had been so proud to get that mission. Killing Mycroft Holmes, my God, there was no higher accolade you could give an assassin than an assignment like that. And all the time, that horrible old man had just been pimping her to his son. Using her to lure him away from Sherlock. As if that could be done, ever, by anyone. And then letting her think he understood her need to have her child with her, was really considering this as a pilot project that might ensure the future of AGRA in a Britain where abandoned children were becoming less and less plentiful. The thing Mary was most angry about was that she had in fact noticed the resemblance. As soon as she saw those photos of John in his camouflage up on Sir's glass-lined office walls, she thought, put a mustache on him and he'd be a little toy china Sir. In her own mind, when she got cross with Joihn during their marriage, she'd sometimes called him Mini-Me.

Without the mustache, she decided as she walked back toward John, the resemblance was far less striking. She'd noticed that after Sherlock came back, the sex had become slightly more interesting to her. She'd always assumed that it was because Sherlock kept John in a constant state of arousal, even though most of it burned off as anger. Now she wondered if it was because, without the mustache, John no longer reminded her as strongly of the closest thing she'd ever had to a father.

Sherlock was, of course, right there at his side. Harry was a little ways off, chatting up Janine. Mary had thought that had been a good idea, using Janine as the honey trap. It had worked. At first.

John and Sherlock were staring up at the top of the shaft. Mary looked up too, once she reached them.

"Why isn't it opening?" John said.

Rachel, alarmed, opened her eyes and looked up. She could surely see what they all now knew: pulling that lever had apparently had no effect whatsoever. The cloudy dome of glass remained fixed where it had always been.

"I don't know," Mary said.

"Can't we get out the way I came in?" Rachel said. "Whatever that way was?"

Mary shook her head. "The entrances are set so they only stay open for thirty seconds at a time. That feature doesn't change during evac. You know, in case of invasion, you wouldn't want the front doors just standing open. This way, if they have to come down the shafts, you can be ready for them."

Sherlock snorted.

"What?" Mary demanded.

"Janine, take Molly and go down to portal #3. See if you can prop it open."

They departed. Sherlock leapt onto one of the climbing poles and began ascending, hand over hand. Looking at him from below in his burglar's black, Mary could almost appreciate what John saw in him.

"You'd better come with me, Mary," Sherlock called down. 

Mary jumped onto the climbing wall. She tested her right hand. It could not hold her up unassisted; but it could help a bit.

"Be careful," Rachel called. 

She didn't specify which parent she was so concerned about.

The group at the bottom of the shaft got smaller as Mary climbed. Mary looked up at the three inches of bulletproof glass standing between them and freedom, and at Sherlock's knees and feet inching up the climbing pole.

"Sherlock," she said.

"Not interested," he replied. He made it look easy; but he was starting to breathe harder. She herself was not as flexible, nor her arms as strong, as they used to be.

"You didn't even let me--"

"You're about to ask me what will become of you once we return to the land of the living," Sherlock said, without slowing down. "After an opening gambit designed to remind me of how curious Rachel was and is still bound to be about her mother, and perhaps the citation of a few studies indicating that girls do better when raised in a household containing at least one female parent, you will attempt to persuade me that for Rachel's benefit, we should allow you occasional contact with her after we get outside. You will, while making this argument, be slyly insinuating that it would be especially difficult for Rachel to have a parent in prison, after all that's happened, and that perhaps I could broker some arrangement with the authorities who are waiting at the top of this shaft to take you into custody, where by turning queen's evidence you could ensure a moderate amount of freedom under an assumed identity."

As a girl, while watching romantic comedies during cultural literacy, she had dreamed of finding a man who would understand her completely. In reality, she found it infuriating.

"So what if I was?" Mary panted, stretching up as far as she could for the next handhold. If she could overtake him that might provide at least a few crumbs of personal satisfaction.

"You know what would happen next," Sherlock said. "I'd agree to it all order to secure your cooperation, then renege as soon as we were all out of danger. What's the point? If in fact we all survive, Mary,  _your_ arguments will be the  _last_ thing any of us take into account when we decide what to do with you."

Meaning they hadn't decided yet. Which was, in its way, a victory.

Buoyed by this knowledge, she reached the dome ahead of him. She found the thick iron ring in which the glass was set, and traced it to the hydraulic-powered hinge that would push the thing up once they resolved whatever was preventing the completion of the circuit that was supposed to power it. She pulled out a utility knife and began cutting into the conduit that housed the wires connecting it to the lever.

Sherlock reached the lattice at the top, to which his pole and several of the other climbing structures were anchored. It was a crisscross web of heavy metal bars with plenty of openings through which even a full-grown man could pull himself with ease. Sherlock hauled himself up, braced each of his feet on one of the intersections, and felt the underside of the dome with his hands. Then he crawled spider-wise to the climbing wall and hoisted himself up alongside Mary.

"Something wrong?" he inquired.

Mary knew it was a rhetorical question. She turned away from the huge metal hinge and felt an overwhelming urge to just push Sherlock and his smug eyebrows and smirk right off the wall.

"How did you know?" she demanded.

"That the hinge is a dummy that does not actually open and that the conduit leading to it is completely bereft of actual wiring?"

"Yes!" Mary shouted.

"Mary," Sherlock began. "Oh, Mary."

The verve that normally accompanied one of Sherlock's deduction spasms was completely absent. His face looked gray, and drawn, and strangely sad. It took him several seconds to continue, as John and Rachel watched anxiously from below.

"You say you do regular evac drills," Sherlock sighed. "During these drills, are the shaft lids actually opened?"

Mary felt nausea seize her. They were not. This was explained to the admins. If you opened the lids, someone might make a break for it. That girl would have to be turfed, and AGRA would lose someone who might have made a fine operative if she had never been exposed to such temptation. That was why you never really pulled the big red lever during the evac drill.

"They don't open," Mary gasped, seeing the words in Sherlock's wordless gaze. "They were never designed to open."

"Mary, you are part of a secret, illegal organization which has historically been used to undermine Britain's legitimate government and which inhabits a secret underground facility which was built with illegally appropriated funds after Parliament rejected the bill that proposed it. Furthermore you have seen ample evidence of the fact that AGRA culture treats its operatives' lives as disposable. What ever made you think that anyone administering AGRA ever intended, in the event of an emergency, that  _any_ of you should survive to venture above ground and tell your tales?"

Climbing had always come easily to Mary. Now, for the first time, she felt vertigo.

"Maybe the entrances..."

She risked a glance below. Janine and Molly had returned and were talking to John and Harry. Nothing about that conversation looked happy. 

"What's the verdict?" Sherlock called to them.

Janine and Molly turned stricken faces up toward Sherlock. 

"We can't even get to to the portal," Janine shouted back. "There's a blast door in front of it."

Mary gasped. Sherlock said, "No doubt they are triggered by the evac alarm."

The better to pen them in and drown them all, like kittens in a bag.

"What are we to do?" Mary said, through teeth that were actually chattering. "How will we get out of here?"

Sherlock gave her a look that she could not read at all.

"Golf Sierra, this is Hotel Whiskey Juliet Mike," he said. 

Mary waited in suspense while he listened to the voice on the earpiece. She made the mistake of looking down. Not only did it make her dizzy, but she saw, streaming into the circle containing Rachel, a dozen little figures with black shoulders and round heads. Some of the children had been successfully herded out of the lower level. The evacuation was proceeding according to the official plan.

"Among the many emergency vehicles you've called to the scene, Lestrade," Sherlock inquired, "is there by any chance a fire truck?"

Amazingly, Rachel was clambering down from John's shoulders. She had found one of the tiny figures in black, who was now clinging to Rachel just as she'd clung to John. From the curly dark hair, Mary imagined it was Annie.

"Excellent. What about a bomb disposal squad?" Sherlock paused again. "Yes, yes, but when.  _When_ will they be here?"

John and Rachel were now encircled by a growing mass of black-clad girls and women. John had his arms out and was talking to them, asking them to stay back while they sorted it out. They were actually listening to him. Well, of course the admins at least would be comforted by his voice. It was so much like the voice of Sir.

"All right then, Golf," Sherlock said, gazing anxiously up at the dome. "You'll be doing this yourself. Unwire the greenhouse, if possible without blowing yourself to bits. Then collect the explosives and get inside the greenhouse and I'll tell you where to place them."

Janine and Molly had joined John in the circle. They were also being the Voice of Authority. Even Rachel was imitating them now, holding up her little hands, palms out, to say  _please stay well back and await your instructions._

"Yes, Lestrade," she heard Sherlock snap. "Yes. You're going to blow it up."

Mary could have sworn she heard a laugh coming from the earpiece. Sherlock barked into it, "What do you mean? I _have_ told you twice!"

Mary almost laughed.

"Get down, Mary," Sherlock said sharply, climbing back over to his own pole. "I have to stay up and guide him in placing the charges. You help clear the area. When this goes there will be glass shards the size of grapefruit raining down from here. Also possibly fire."

"You don't have to tell  _me_ twice," Mary said, with a grin. She leapt onto Sherlock's pole and slid down it.

Clear the area. Certainly. And then, once she knew Rachel was safe, she was going to look for Sir.

*   *   *   *

Henry Watson had never noticed getting attached to AGRA. Apart from the tin dispatch box, which was no longer on his nightstand, nothing about his quarters ever appeared to matter to him. And yet somehow he regretted leaving them. He had done good work here. He had helped correct the demoralizing effects of universal suffrage, and ushered in a new pax Britannica which would be untroubled by the disruptive effects of either Parliamentary elections or Holmesian brilliance. But most likely, he realized, it was Rachel he was missing. She had made his office almost like home, for the few minutes he'd had her in it.

He stepped into the Inner Office. There was the old tin box, battered beyond utility. He didn't like to reach for it, in front of Anthea. Sentiment was not something you could show to an AGRA girl, unless it was lavished directly upon her. He'd leave it behind. It would never close properly again, and certainly never lock.

Anthea hadn't packed anything. She had instead put on her evac team leader vest, a rather bulky garment full of tools supposedly useful in any emergency. She was leaning over her desk, furiously poking at the little lights that kept winking on and off.

"Anthea," Henry Watson said. "Time to go."

She looked up at him. Her expression was startling. It was so at variance with Anthea's habitual serenity that he couldn't work out what it meant.

Anthea said, "Sir, the teams at escape shafts number 2 and 4 report that the release levers are malfunctioning. I must go and assist. The water's only halfway up the lowest level, sir, I'll be back in plenty of time to--"

"Anthea," he said, surprised. "There's nothing you can do. The hatches at 2 and 4 don't open."

And, as she still seemed a bit at sea, he added, " _None_ of them open."

Anthea looked at him. The expression that had surprised him disappeared. Her eyes looked, for a moment, completely and rather frighteningly blank. 

Then her eyelids lowered slightly, and that bewitching smile returned.

"Of course they don't, Sir."

"I thought you knew," Henry said. "I couldn't _tell_ you, you understand. But I thought you'd infer it."

"Certainly I should have," said Anthea, smiling. "But don't be too hard on me, Sir. We all have lapses, don't we?"

Henry leaned toward her and gently caressed the side of her face. Doing that always made the smile curve, and call up that bit of a dimple that he found so beguiling.

"Don't worry, love," Henry said. "We'll be all right. Come here."

Anthea cast one look over her hysterically flashing desktop. Then she tucked her hand into the crook of the arm he offered her, and he guided her through the gap in the glass wall, back into the round office. He stopped by his desk, keyed in the code that opened the right drawer, withdrew from it the red key, and placed it in the lock that appeared in the glass wall after his retina had been scanned.

On the northern arc of the wall, about one third of the glass separated itself from the rest and began to retract. Inside the opening, he could see the emergency lights flicking on as the sensors triggered them, drawing two lines of bright red beads along the white tiled floor of the hidden tunnel.

"It's a bit of a climb getting up there," he said. "But there's a golf cart inside, and it'll take us straight to the helipad."

Anthea gave his arm a bit of a squeeze. "My goodness, Sir," she said. "I'd no idea we had a helipad."

"No," Henry said, proudly. "I hoped it would never come to this, of course. But in a way, I'm glad I got to show it off to you. Do you like it?"

"Yes," Anthea said, looking up at him almost shyly. "I like it very much."

*   *   *   *

"Please move back into the corridor,"John heard Rachel saying, in heartbreakingly grown-up tones. "Everything will be perfectly all right. My dads are here and they will fix the hatch. They just need us to clear the area. It's going to be quite a terrific bang."

 John felt a great warm surge of pride that took a bit of the edge of his rising panic. Mary had convinced the grown women to recede about twelve feet down the corridor--what she was telling them, he had no idea--and there they stayed. But the girls kept inching forward, trying to get a peek at what was going on in their play space. He could hardly blame them; but it was extremely nerve-wracking. 

They listened to Rachel, though. The younger ones seemed almost to have imprinted on her, like baby ducks. Perhaps when Rachel grows up she'll be a sheepdog, John thought, and nearly yielded to a strangely overpowering urge to laugh like an idiot as he remembered saving Sherlock from the stampeding sheep.

God. The sheep pen. Well, Sally was on the scene now, digging up the hideous crop that had been planted there. He wondered if all of them had actually been abandoned. He rather suspected that, once the details became known, mothers and fathers and grandparents would emerge from the shadows, saying  _they told us she'd been lost at sea, they said she was being adopted by a couple in America._

Janine, Molly, and Harry were stationed at the other entrance. So far they'd had nothing to do. He was enjoying watching Harry and Janine flirt again. Not a good match. But the flirting they really had down. One thing the Watsons had on their side.

The Watsons. God almighty. He would never be able to hear the name now without seeing his father's face, superimposed over that child's skull.

Nor could he banish from his mind the sight of Harry, miraculously risen from the grave, brandishing an old tin box in one hand.

John felt his hackles rise. But the thing that appeared to be dropping from the ceiling like a bomb was actually Sherlock. He must have finished playing demolition derby with Greg. He slipped back to join them down the hall, as Harry led her contingent down the other corridor to a safe distance.

"Ready now?" John said.

Sherlock nodded. Then his eyes got that abstracted look. John turned to see what it was that Sherlock had seen coming down the corridor behind him.

More children. And more women. All dressed in black, all running. The other AGRA women turned around when they heard them coming. The incoming group slowed to a stop, and the buzz of conversation grew louder.  _Yours didn't work either? No. What about number 6? No, Amanda's just come from there, she says it's the same all over. What's going on here? Looks like they're blowing the hatch. Where's Anthea? Isn't she the evac team leader? Who the fuck is that? Is that Sir? They can't BOTH be Sir._

Sherlock touched the earpiece, as if for luck, and braced himself. 

"Light the fuse, Greg."

Sherlock turned around and called to the crowd of increasing size that kept massing in the hallway.

"Everyone duck and cover!" he shouted. "Now!"

They stared at him. Some of them laughed. Then the boom came.

The roar of flame, the hiss of fire extinguishers, the percussive rhythm of the glass raining down on the floor below. Oh God, John thought suddenly. Poor Harry and her bare feet. She'll be cut to ribbons. 

Immediately he was hit by the realization that there was no possible way that Harry could climb out of that shaft. Even if her wrist hadn't been broken, her body was heavy and her arms were not strong. She would not be able to drag herself up. Could he carry her? Could he and Sherlock carry her between them? Could someone lower down a rope or something?

Sherlock started back to life, springing up from his crouch. He turned to face the crowd in the tunnel.

"Ladies and...other ladies," he called out. "The hatch is open. We will evacuate the youngest children first. If I could have all the under fives come up here to me, please, and line up behind Rachel."

There was a confused movement in the tunnel as the children began squirming between the adults to get to the front. John realized for the first time that his feet were cold. 

Not just cold. Wet. 

He looked down. A pool of water was expanding along the corridor, lapping toward the escape shaft. There was another movement of the crowd, this time more menacing.

"Just the under fives," Sherlock shouted. "At this rate it will take at least an hour for this tunnel to fill with water. There is time for everyone to get safely away as long as we do this in an orderly fashion. Excuse me, you are definitely not under five. To the back of the queue with you, this instant."

Echoing down the other corridor, John heard Harry's voice. "Children first. I said CHILDREN FIRST. If you are not a child, then STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" And then Janine's voice ringing out, "Mother of God, have you no decency?"

No. They had not. John could hear the tramp of AGRA-issue boots already in their hallway. And while he was looking over to see what would happen, he felt an elbow slam into his kidneys.

When he finally fetched up against the side of the corridor, he saw with relief that Sherlock had grabbed Rachel and was shielding her with his body. The water, now a couple of inches deep, seeped into John's clothes and added to his misery.

He felt for his gun, wondering if a warning shot would do any good, or if you could even fire a warning shot safely in a place like this.

His gun was not there.

He tried to remember what had last happened to it. The last time he could swear he'd had it was when Anthea kicked it out of his hand. When they left the room he hadn't even been thinking about it. Just as Harry had forgotten, in the panic and the scramble, all about the tin box.

Well, what did it matter. According to her, his father had already emptied it. Why he stole it in the first place, why kept it at all, John did not understand.

It would be nice to understand SOMETHING about his father, before one or both of them died.

A splash nearby alerted him to the fact that Rachel was on her feet. Sherlock was up too. John stood up, dripping, and gazed balefully at the spectacle unfolding in the climbing area. Black-clad women were thrusting the children out of the way, fighting to be the first to the climbing structures. They were throwing themselves at them in twos and threes. From a distance they looked like a swarm of spiders fighting its way up a tree trunk.

"It's not safe," Rachel cried. "It's not safe. Look, they're knocking each other off--and--and I don't think the ladder was meant to hold that many people--"

Even as Rachel said it, John heard the groan of metal under stress, and one of the poles began to sway.

Harry and the others had given up and come to join them. One of Harry's feet was bleeding, but she was apparently too full of disgust for fallen human nature to care.

"Fucking AGRA," Harry spat. "Oh. Sorry, Rachel."

"It's all right, Aunt Harriet," said Rachel brightly. "I promise I won't repeat any bad words I hear while you're rescuing me."

"I know you won't, sweetheart," said Harry. "But look at this. At this rate, nobody will get out."

"No, no," said John, trying to sound hopeful. "Look, there are a couple already at the catwalk, and--"

The sight of two women being hauled up to safety by the rescue workers outside the rim inspired another surge toward the climbing structures. He watched one woman pull another one off the climbing wall. She splashed into the water, landing with a nasty wet slap. Rachel gave out a little shriek.

The children had given up. They huddled together in the ankle-deep water by the red lever. One of them kept pushing the lever up and then slamming it back down again, as if it might magically conjure up some sort of flying carpet for them to ride on.

"Daddy. Lolo," Rachel said, firmly. "We _have_ to do something. The grown-ups are hogging all the escape."

Sherlock, who had been gazing at this spectacle in silent horror, suddenly seemed to snap back to life. 

"We're all fools!" he shouted.

"Speak for yourself," said Janine.

"No! I mean--there are six of these shafts. AGRA leadership appear to have been lamentably unimaginative. They are most likely all defended in the same manner, which means a pile of explosives in each greenhouse."

"Ah," said John. "Now you're talking. If we blow open another shaft and just don't tell the adults about it--"

"John," said Harry, in a sort of warning tone.

"At first," Sherlock said waving a dismissive hand at Harry. "We evacuate the children first and then declare it open for general boarding." He fingered the earpiece nervously. "Lestrade. Lestrade, come in."

Rachel hovered near Sherlock anxiously. Her own problems were forgotten. She just wanted all the children to be safe. John thanked God she had never seen that little skull.

"Yes. Yes, Lestrade, it was a beautiful explosion. Did you enjoy doing it?" Sherlock nodded, apparently in sync with Lestrade's response. "Would you enjoy doing it again?"

Everyone held their breath. Then Sherlock punched the air.

"All right, Greg. Head to the site due north of this one and be sure to have a fire truck standing by." Sherlock began splashing down the corridor, followed by Rachel and Harry. Molly hesitated, looking between them and John, who was looking back at the escape shaft. 

John saw Mary's blonde head hovering at the edge of one of the clusters around the climbing poles. 

"I'll catch up," he said.

Molly waded off through the rising water. John sloshed over to Mary and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Come with me," he said. "And don't tell anyone."

Mary gave him a bit of a smirk and raised an eyebrow. Anger burned the back of his throat. He grabbed her elbow and tugged her away.

"Sorry," Mary said sourly, as she reluctantly accompanied him. "I forgot you're too much of a Serious Parent now to be amused by innuendo."

He kept his eyes front and his feet moving. But he couldn't help firing back.

"We used to laugh," he said. "You made me laugh. First one able to do it after Sherlock left. It did me good." John tried to speed up, but the water was halfway up his shins now and all he could manage was a kind of comic waddle. "You've killed that. Forever. Nothing about you is funny any more."

He heard her giving that little chuckle that he'd loved so much. He splashed on even harder.

"Nor sexy, I suppose," Mary said, teasingly.

John stopped and turned. It took her a couple splashes to halt behind him, looking with some consternation at his face.

"Look,  _Agnes,_ " John said. "Mary Morstan died ten years ago at Leinster Gardens. Don't try to revive her. It's grotesque."

The water seemed to be rushing in faster now. It was cold, and it smelled of salt. 

"Well then what  _do_ you want me for?" Mary demanded.

"We're opening a second escape shaft," John said. "Don't tell anyone, there'll only be another panic. I want you to  _discreetly_ collect the children--they'll listen to you, they know who you are--and lead them out to this point in ones and twos. Once we have them all together we'll move on to the second escape shaft, and--"

"Look," Mary said. "What we should be doing is trying to find Sir. I'm sure  _he_ has an evacuation plan that actually works."

John clenched his hands.

"You are forgetting, Mary," he said, "that I know your boss, and that although I am quite sure that he does have a secret evac plan, I am equally certain that it will be something private and small where there's only enough for him. We cannot get the children out that way. And doing that is more important than assassinating him."

Mary made made a noise of annoyance, turned her head sharply away, and said, "I disagree. I think assassinating that bastard is  _extremely_ important."

"Whereas saving children from drowning--" John began.

"If you need me to save Rachel," Mary said, "then ask for my help. But I'm not going to risk my life down here--"

"Damn it, Mary!" John shouted. "You want to be Rachel's mother? You want to be part of this family? Then you stay here and you help get these children out. Even though they're not yours. Even though there may not be anyone in the world who misses them or cares for them. Just because they're children and they're scared and they can't get out on their own. You want to be a Watson, Mary? THIS IS WHAT WE DO!"

Mary stared back at him. She looked like a stranger to whom he had never spoken.

"It's not what your father does," she said. "It's not what he has  _ever_ done."

John swallowed the bile that rose in the back of his throat.

"My father is no longer a Watson, Mary," he said, quietly. " _His_ name is  _Sir_."

The water dimpled and shivered. A fraction of a second later, John heard the distant boom. He turned to look toward the escape shaft whose cap had just been blown.

Rachel was standing there, nearly up to her waist in water. She was giving her mother a very hard stare. Harry was hobbling after her, calling, "Wait, Rachel. Wait for me."

"Never mind, Mummy," Rachel said, crisply. "Don't you bother. I'll do it."

By the time Harry finally reached them, Rachel had already darted out to the group of children huddled around the lever. John saw her bend, whisper, point in their direction. Two five year old girls wandered over, trying to look as if they knew what "nonchalant" meant. 

"I tried to catch up with her," Harry panted. "But I can't, even with shoes on dry land. This is salt water, John. It really fucking stings. How soon can we get out of here?"

"We have to get the children up first," John said.

"Oh, naturally," Harry answered. "But how long do you think that will take?"

Mary glared at Harry. Then Mary went trotting off in the direction of the boom.

"Well," Harry said, "I guess that's one arse that can be trusted to save itself."

John laughed.

"Can you..." Harry began, and then just gave up, defeated, waving her hands in silence. "Can you fucking...believe what just happened?"

"Yes and no," John finally answered.

"Same here," Harry replied.

They watched Rachel spread the news. Another two children were making the passage into the corridor. Rachel was working steadily, going from one little girl in black to the next. John's heart filled with love and pride.  

Harry began murmuring to the girls as they came by, ushering them quietly up the corridor. Rachel arrived with the last two, a great girl of about sixteen with crazy hair and piercings, and a girl who looked about four and seemed to be barely keeping her chin out of the water.

"Here," John said, turning around and squatting down. "Climb up on my back, I'll carry you."

As the girl clambered up, Rachel said, "Her name's Annie."

"Of course it is," said John, standing up with Annie riding piggyback. 

"No it's not!" Annie shouted. "I'm tired of being Annie! I want a name that doesn't start with A! I want to be Eveline!"

"Well, Eveline," Harry said, as they splashed back to the escape shaft. "It wouldn't be my first choice, personally. But once we get you out of here, you can call yourself anything you want."

When they reached the escape shaft, the fire was already out. Clouds of foam floated on the waist-high water. Sherlock was in the middle, holding on to the climbing ladder. John thought he could just about see Mary's dark silhouette disappearing into the bright haze at the top of the open shaft.

"You go on up, Rachel," John said. "We'll send the others up after you, one at a time. Uncle Greg is up there, he'll take care of you till we get there."

Rachel looked up at the ladder, and at the bright lights hovering at the top of the shaft, and at the face of what was probably Greg Lestrade, leaning over the edge, waving to know he was ready for her.

"Watch me, Daddy!" Rachel said, putting her hands on the rung. "Watch me climb!"

She began ascending. Water dripped from her black leggings and ran down the posts of the ladder. But she went up, up, up, surefooted and unafraid. He glanced at Sherlock, who was keeping an eye on Mary. Look, look, he wanted to say. You should see this too. But someone had to keep an eye on Mary. Someone would always have to keep an eye on Mary, for the rest of their lives.

*   *   *   *

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY TEN**

I was never more glad to see my uncle Greg than I was when I got to the top of the climbing place. He just lifted me up like I was a kitten and hopped me over the edge with all its nasty broken glass and charred bits and plopped me down on the other side. I looked around for my Mummy but she wasn't there. Greg said she was in a police car and they were taking her to see Sally. I was relieved about that but there was also part of me that wanted to say goodbye. Helena says that this sort of situation is called 'ambivalence' and she said that children like me whose parents are not together have a lot of ambivalence in their lives and that this is something we have to accept. Because we want for our parents to be together and to have them all there with us but we want them to be making each other happy, and they can't make each other happy, and so we can't have what we want really, so whatever it is that we do have, it's part what we want and part what we don't want and that's why we have ambivalence.

The people from the ambulance set upon me then with blankets and everything and kept poking things at me and wiping my skin with things and interrupting to ask me questions. But I could still watch the evacuation from my seat in the back of the ambulance, because the doors were open. I was so glad to see Annie coming up first. I knew she would be the most frightened. And then when Alex came up, she looked like she wanted to come over to me, but one of the women from the ambulance pounced on her with a blanket and they led her off to a different part of the farm. I couldn't see much of the farm because it was so dark. Just a house and a barn and bits of glass everywhere and a funny white fence around a big plot of grass where a little flock of sheep were sleeping.

Then after the children were up and they were all sitting round on the grass in their blankets being given hot cocoa, I saw Greg lifting Molly out, and then they set up a kind of winch thing they borrowed from the fire truck and lowered it down and there was a big cheer when Harry finally came up and got lifted out by Greg and two other people, sitting in this kind of sling thing and trying to do a big cheesecake pose for the cameras. It made everyone laugh. Janine came up afterward and there was some whistling from some of the men but then Harry asked if anyone needed her to kick their arse because she was in fine form today and everyone just laughed and Janine gave her a big hug.

When Lolo came out he had to go talk to people and tell them what to do, as he does. My Dad came back to the ambulance and sat next to me. I put my arms around him and he held on to me and he said, Rachel, and then he couldn't say the next thing because he was crying and so was I and we just kept crying for a while.

I might have taken a bit of a nap because the next thing I remember was being in the back of a car, all wrapped in blankets, between my Dad and Lolo in the back seat. Aunt Harriet was driving and it was really Aunt Harriet. It wasn't her car though. It was a rental someone found for them. Her car was in no shape to drive and anyway it was evidence.

I looked up at my Dad and Lolo and I said, Aunt Harriet was right, you found me.

And my Dad kind of blinked a lot and he said, Yes, Rachel. We'll always find you. 

I said, I was afraid you would be so mad you wouldn't even look for me.

My Dad held me closer and Lolo said, Rachel, we love you unconditionally. Let me tell you what unconditionally means in this context. It means that you do not have to do anything to earn or deserve our love. It is given to you freely, as a gift, forever. It doesn't matter how much trouble you get into or how many rules you break or for that matter how many terrible decisions we might make because we think it's the right thing to do.

And my Aunt Harriet, from the front seat, said, No names no pack drill.

My Dad said, You don't have to go back to the Priory School, Rachel. We'll take you home. It was a mistake. I'm sorry. We were miserable without you.

Lolo said, if I might finish. And my aunt and my Dad said, at the same time, Of Course.

Lolo said, Rachel, there is nothing you could possibly do that would make any of us in this car stop loving you. Anyone who ever tries to make you think there is, is lying.

I looked at him, and I nodded, and I said, I'll remember, Lolo.

And I closed my eyes. And I knew I was safe. And I fell asleep again, right there in the car, knowing I was on my way home.

*   *   *   *   *

**SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC**

Henry Watson was gratified to see that Anthea appeared to be really enjoying the ride. It was the very newest drone helicopter, still not officially being offered for sale, although many had already been bought and delivered to those in MI6 with some pull and some cash. It came with a GPS as simple to use as the one in a Lexus, and a takeoff sequence that a monkey could execute. After that, it flew itself--quietly, and with radar resistance. It was the closest you could get to a hovercraft. 

Anthea was seated on the cushions along one of the walls, savoring a whiskey and soda on the rocks. She was beautiful when she didn't know she was being looked at; the smile became more intriguing somehow. If one had to go into exile, this was definitely the way to do it.

But she looked up and saw him looking. It spoiled things, but only a little. She set down her glass in the little bracket and said, "Where are we going?"

"Little island off the coast of South America," he told her, with some pride. "Privately owned. Used to be Magnussen's. Bought it from the estate for a song after Agnes took him down."

Good old Agnes. He hoped John would at least save her life. She would never be allowed near Rachel again and therefore posed no threat to him. Whereas Henry hoped that when the time was ripe, and he was settled in whatever his new life was, that he would one day be in a position to make another bid for Rachel.

"May I ask you a question, Sir?" said Anthea, prettily.

"Of course," he said. "Can't promise I'll answer, but try me."

"Does it bother you at all that your whole family is drowning along with the rest of the organization?"

He smiled, and reached across from his own cushioned bench to pat Anthea on the knee.

"They're not. Don't worry about them. John's a survivor, and the Holmes boy's a genius, and Harry's tough. They'll see Rachel through it somehow, and live to fight again. I'm not concerned."

He relaxed against the cushions. Anthea was still wearing that evacuation vest, but he didn't like to suggest she take it off. The evacuation was still evidently a touchy subject. He truly had thought she knew. She was smart enough to work it out.

"They say Sherlock had nothing on Mycroft when it came to brains," he said. "But you got to him after all. Can he really have been as smart as all that?"

Anthea smiled, and began unbuckling her evac vest. As she laid it on the cushions next to her, looking down at it with a kind of gentle regret, she said, "Oh yes. He really was."

Hype, the old man thought bitterly. Media puffery. The Watson blood was just as good. So were the Watson brains, if anyone knew. He looked out the windshield where the pilot would have been sitting, wondering how long it would take them to get to this island, and whether the drone knew enough to plan for refueling stops.

"You know," he began, turning back toward Anthea.

She had changed. She'd taken off the evac vest, of course. But also, she was pointing a gun at him. John's gun, in fact. And that light in her eyes was definitely not part of the AGRA Affect.

Mainly, at that moment, Henry Watson felt a kind of nostalgic sadness. Not related to Anthea, really. More a wish that it could be John in the helicopter, and not John's gun. Fear was far from his mind. He'd made her, and he could handle her.

"This is because of the evacuation, isn't it," he said. "I know it's upsetting, but you must see the logic of it."

"I do," said Anthea. 

"And of course you were always going to come along with me."

"This isn't about that," said Anthea. Her eyes had lost that gently amused look that made her so refreshing to contemplate. "It's true that if I hadn't been planning to kill you, finding out that the emergency plan had always been to exterminate us would have been enough to make me start. And if I had known that there was in fact no functioning evacuation plan, I certainly would not have enabled Elizabeth to blow up the waterworks."

"Elizabeth?" he repeated, blankly. She couldn't be an AGRA girl, but he had no idea who Anthea was talking about.

"Lady Elizabeth Smallwood," Anthea said. "The man whose husband you used Magnussen to ruin. We've been collaborating since shortly before Mycroft's death. If it makes things easier for you, I can refer to her as Amidala. That's the name we always used with each other, so that in case of interception it would look as if I were communicating with an AGRA operative in the field. I'd have preferred a less....obvious alias; but she was a grieving woman, and I humored her."

"So is that what this is about? Mycroft?" he exclaimed. He was genuinely surprised; he'd thought Anthea's intelligence would have rendered her immune to this kind of sentimental nonsense. "Don't tell me you discovered after you killed him that in fact you'd fallen in love with him."  

"No," Anthea said, calmly. "No, I'm an AGRA girl. I'm incapable of love. I'm incapable, really, of any kind of genuine feeling, except for the shallow rage that I feel toward people who make my life difficult or interfere with my plans. What I am capable of," she said, tossing her head a bit to get a stray wisp of hair out of her face, "as a sentient creature, is self-reflection. I am capable of looking at the world I inhabit and seeing how miserably limited and how fundamentally unjust it is. I am capable of understanding that I was never meant to be a reasoning creature, and that the qualities I am so often praised for are the same qualities that make me a useful tool and a trustworthy servant."

"I've always tried to be a good mentor to you," he said. He found her speech unsettling. It was so calm, and clearly articulated, and yet so startling in its content. It reminded him of the bit in the middle of  _Frankenstein_ when the Creature returns and Victor hears it speak, for the first time, in perfect and ornate prose.

"A month after you first sent me to work for Mycroft," Anthea went on, dispassionately, "he called me into his office and said," and here the smile very nearly returned, " 'Anthea, your work is exceptional, and you are underpaid. I am putting in a request for your promotion to pay scale 4D.' And before I even knew what I was saying, I said, 'Thank you, sir, but I don't want more money.' "

He couldn't help laughing. What a fairy tale.

"It's quite true," Anthea insisted. "My needs were amply provided for, and, as I realized at that moment, there was nothing that I actually  _wanted._ I did not have a single authentic desire. You see for this job, I didn't need someone else's identity," she said. "It was my first experiment with living just as myself. And it was quite difficult. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I wanted, what I liked or disliked. And Mycroft said, 'Well, I must reward you somehow. Is there anything I could give you that you do want?' "

He repressed the sardonic chuckle that the words inspired in him.

"And two days later I went back to him," Anthea continued. "And I said, 'I want there to be no new AGRA girls.'"

For the first time, this began to feel like a serious situation. Anthea had lost her detachment and he could hear real anger. Anger and a gun were always a dangerous combination. You had to keep a lid on it. You had to be disciplined.

"It took Mycroft some time to think it over," she said. "But then one day we went for a walk, by the sea where the noise of the waves would interfere with anyone listening to us, and he said, 'I think I can see my way clear to giving you that pay rise you spoke of. But you will have to work very hard, and it will take about twenty years.'"

This could not be what it sounded like.

"But you shot him," the old man interrupted. "You shot him, on my orders."

That half-smile came back. He had never noticed before how chilling it actually was.

"I shot him, yes," Anthea said. "But not because you told me to."

There was a tense pause, during which the old man began to wonder whether they could get the cabin of this thing any warmer.

"Are you familiar with _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_?" she said. _  
_

He laughed. "Really, Anthea, I don't see--"

"We screen all the Harry Potter films in cultural literacy," she said. "I've seen it many times. Mycroft read all the books, you know, during a rainy afternoon, as he does. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer, about five years ago--"

"Oh  _no,_ " the old man groaned. 

"He calculated that even with the best possible treatment outcome he had perhaps two years left, of rapidly declining quality," Anthea went on. "He told no one, of course, apart from myself and Elizabeth. Not his parents, not Sherlock. Even the doctor who diagnosed him believed he was examining someone else."

He began to feel as if they had left reality along with the ground, and that his new hovercraft had entered a nightmare world.

"When I informed him that you had ordered his execution," Anthea went on, "he was sincerely pleased. It had depressed him to think of dying by inches in a hospital bed, surrounding by his grieving family, struck down by a disease brought on by a stupid habit against which his beloved mother had always warned him. He deduced, quite accurately, that I would see how very much more satisfactory it would be for him to die quickly, with a minimum of pain, and in a way that would tempt Selkirk's minions into the open where their crimes could be documented. Elizabeth has been documenting Selkirk's MPs; Assistant Commissioner Donovan has been independently documenting the corruption his cronies have sown in the police force. We had planned to let things ripen for another year or two. But then Agnes proposed Operation Pamina; and now here we are."

"Wasted effort," he barked. "Get rid of one crew and another will spring up. There will always be some sort of AGRA."

"You're probably right," Anthea said. "But for a few years, at least, there will be room for other things to breathe. That was all Mycroft ever hoped for. Every ten years or so, a clean sweep; and after that, room for a little while for a different world to breathe. He hoped that one day there would be a cumulative effect, and the world would at last be governed by reason instead of fear and greed. He knew he wouldn't live to see it. None of us will. But Mycroft had vision," Anthea said. "He could see beyond the end of his own life."

"You don't have to do this, Anthea," he said, changing tactics. "I've always treated you well. I'm an old man. I'm harmless. I've already exiled myself. Why put one more death on your conscience?"

This had evidently been the wrong thing to say. Anthea gripped the gun tighter, elevated it a bit, and undid the safety.

"I'm an AGRA girl, Sir," she said. "You know what that means. It means that I look at you, Sir, and all I see is a target. Your work is done. Your wife is dead. Your children are better off without you. Your only grandchild met you once and I don't think you made a very good impression. You have never done anything decent or helpful for the people of this country. Nobody will miss you. Nobody will mourn you. The fact that you are a living and sentient being with a unique and irreplaceable life doesn't impress me at all. Nobody has ever suggested to me that it should."

If he sprang at her, he knew, she would drop him before he reached her. She had been the best, when she was in the field. He could think of no argument to marshal against her logic. Only the cry that he  _was_ alive, that it was his only life, that he wasn't finished with it yet, that he wanted more time.

"Anthea," he said, fighting to keep himself together. "Don't do this. At least wait till we reach the island. A long flight with a body in the cabin, you won't like it."

She said nothing. He babbled on, hating himself for being unable to stop.

"Don't kill me, Anthea. Please. If any of what you said is true, then you shouldn't be killing more people. You really shouldn't."

That smile was back again. He had never seen it so hard and glittering and cruel.

"People like you _should_ be killed, Sir," she said, smiling. "That's why you made people like me."

Anthea pressed the trigger.  _  
_

END CHAPTER


	26. OCCAM'S RAZOR

**THREE WEEKS LATER**

Part of Sherlock would have liked to attend the initial interview with Dr. Weston. Sherlock had been the one to select her, though of course he had not been spared input from nearly everyone who had ever met Rachel, from Harry to Mrs. Hudson. Although Mrs. Hudson's only comment was, "Oh don't ask me, dearie. In my day, children weren't troubled, they were wicked; and they didn't get therapy, they got spankings." 

The rest of Sherlock, however, vastly preferred to beg off on the excuse that it was his day to go out to his parents' cottage and make sure it was still standing and that there weren't hedgehogs eating the curtains. As his parents had not yet been declared legally incompetent, Sherlock was not empowered to sell the thing, even after his parents had moved into their assisted living facility in London. He hated visiting them there. Materially everything was quite comfortable. Spiritually it reeked of despair and neglect, and after coming home from one of his weekly visits he always changed his clothes immediately. He had been remiss about the visits since Rachel had returned to 221B. There was quite a lot going on. Lady Smallwood was holding almost daily press conferences, and Assistant Commissioner Donovan was fast becoming a household name. Selkirk had resigned after losing a No Confidence vote, and half of the KIP was under investigation. The media hadn't had a story like the AGRA scandal in decades. The public's appetite for juicy details about it was apparently limitless. The discovery, on the shores of Beachy Head, of a crashed drone helicopter containing the body of a man who was eventually identified as Henry Watson, father of John Watson, had driven the broadcast media nearly out of their tiny minds. Henry Watson had been shot twice at close range, once in the heart and once in the center of the forehead. The shooter was, of course, nowhere to be found. Sherlock hoped Anthea had found somewhere pleasant to hide. It was gratifying to know that Mycroft's confidence had not been misplaced after all--either in her, or in Lady Smallwood.

And then there was the return of the perennial problem of what to do about Rachel. The Priory School had forgiven Rachel's fees, in view of the massive and coordinated bullying scheme which had gone undetected by their staff. This, he gathered from Ada's statement, had been organized by Ada without Mary's knowledge, at Henry Watson's request, when he came to feel that Mary's expert one-on-one manipulation of Rachel was not yielding sufficiently quick results. Rachel was on a sort of unofficial holiday right now, as they waited for media interest in her and her movements to become less intense. But she had to go to school, eventually, somewhere. The fact that they had all recently been deeply and violently impressed with a knowledge of how much they all loved each other did not, Sherlock was interested to note, do much to improve their daily interactions. He was not looking forward to her next term, wherever it would take place.

It was better, Sherlock thought, as he drove Harry's new bright red Corvette over the gravel drive, that he be elsewhere for the psychology bits. He had resisted all attempts to take him to therapy as a child and adolescent, convinced that someone who would of necessity be less intelligent than he was would be unable to help him with what he realized were unique difficulties. John had more faith in the process, though Sherlock could not understand why. Mycroft had had a very poor opinion of John's therapist. 

Sherlock parked the Corvette on the gravel drive and walked up the path to the little red-walled cottage. He hadn't gone far before the warnings began. He could not find the external clue that had triggered this sense that there was something new in this environment, something problematically unexpected. Inspecting the path, the vegetation on either side of it, the weathering paint on the front door, turned up nothing except the vague sense that he was not alone. 

Ah, he thought, as he took that one crucial step closer. The voices.

What John always interpreted as exceptionally sensitive hearing was in fact, Sherlock privately believed, a kind of precognition. Though he had never spoken of this to anyone but Mycroft, Sherlock was firmly convinced that the proximity of an active human consciousness was, or should in theory be, actually detectable by the human brain even in the absence of sensory stimuli. There was some neuroscience to support this, though of course whatever spontaneous emission it was that the working human brain generated was not something that could be detected or quantified with existing technology. In any case, Sherlock's ears were now confirming what he had already deduced: there were two people in that cottage, bantering with each other in a leisurely and affectionate way. 

Silently, Sherlock tried the front door. It was, as he had anticipated, already open. Slipping into the kitchen, he saw his father sitting up at the table, reading a newspaper. He was wrapped in a worn flannel dressing gown and had at his elbow a great steaming mug of tea. Glancing toward the sink, Sherlock noted the more substantial form of his mother, standing over the counter and pouring her own mug of tea from the red-glazed pot they had brought back from some junket to the American midwest years ago. It was a scene one could have witnessed on any one of a thousand mornings in this cottage; but it was, given the rate of their deterioration over the past five years, at the same time so thoroughly inexplicable that initially Sherlock hypothesized that they had both died during the night and that he was looking at their ghosts.

A moment later the materialist solution came to him.

"Good morning, Mummy," Sherlock called out brightly. "Hello, Daddy. Shall I welcome you back to the land of the living?"

His mother set the teapot down and turned around. His father looked up from his paper and smiled. Just seeing Alfred's face recognize him, unhesitatingly and with unconcealed pleasure, nearly undid Sherlock; but he clung to his tone of aggrieved exasperation.

"Or have you been here for some time now, and just never thought to notify me of your change of address?" Sherlock continued. "Dear Sherlock, back at cottage, drop by for a cuppa when you have a moment, love your parents who are not suffering from dementia or insanity at all even though for five years they pretended to you that they were."

"Oh dear," Alfred said, glancing at Marian. "You were right, my dear. He is angry."

Marian simply held up the red-glazed teapot. "Tea, Sherlock?"

Sherlock pulled a face; but he said, "Please."

"Take the armchair," said Marian, moving to the cupboard to get another mug.

"You see, Sherlock," Alfred began. "After what happened to Mycroft, we thought--"

Sherlock slumped into the chair, waving a hand in Alfred's direction. "Yes, I know, you thought that the best way to protect yourself from the gang that killed him would be to convince them that you were both too far gone to have any useful information about his activities."

Alfred smiled. "That's right, Sherlock. Aren't you clever."

"And Mummy's insistence that Mycroft was still alive, in the face of clear and conclusive evidence to the contrary, would further convince even her most intimate associates that she actually knew nothing about the manner and mode of Mycroft's death."

His mother returned to the table, and set the mug down before him. Alfred half-rose to help her pull out the chair; but she motioned for him to stay. Sherlock noticed that Marian's mobility was in fact more limited now. That much of the act was real.

"In fact I didn't, Sherlock," she said, sipping her tea thoughtfully. "Not until I read the letter. After that, of course, I perceived that some sort of subterfuge would be necessary."

Sherlock struggled to keep down the anger that was rising in him. He had no right to it. It had been a sensible way of coping with the situation. The fact that they chose to practice their deception upon him as well as their adversaries was not something he was entitled to complain of.

"What letter was this?" Sherlock asked, trying to indicate that it was a matter of total indifference to him.

"There's one for you too, Sherlock," Alfred said, pushing himself slowly out of his chair. "Only we weren't to let you have it until after Selkirk had resigned. Back in a mo."

Alfred moved haltingly out of the kitchen, leaving Sherlock to look into his mother's face and, for the first time in five years, really see her there.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," she said. "I truly am. But you couldn't have kept it up. You'd have wanted to talk to us--I mean, really, talk to us about Mycroft, and...and we couldn't have sustained it. It would have put all of us in danger."

The angry voice that had been haunting Sherlock's mind since that night at the Landmark croaked out,  _Turnabout is fair play._

There was a look of concern taking shape on Marian's face that made Sherlock feel very apprehensive suddenly.

"Oh Sherlock," Marian said. "You didn't really...but you knew. Surely. You knew that he really was dead."

Sherlock found the tears that sprang to his eyes and the convulsion of his throat both embarrassing and terrifyingly unexpected. Sherlock didn't have to tell her; she was reading it. As long as Marian had--apparently--refused to accept Mycroft's death, some part of Sherlock had clung to the hope that perhaps it was all a trick. Perhaps Mycroft had managed to fool everyone, and the body that Sherlock had identified in the morgue was not really his own. And now, he would have to let go.

Snuffling back the tears, Sherlock said, "So he's not...hiding somewhere, waiting to come back."

Marian reached over and patted Sherlock's hand.

"No, Sherlock. I'm afraid not. Your brother is dead. We've lost him, love. We truly have."

What Alfred made of the spectacle he found when he returned to the kitchen, Sherlock would never know. He hadn't cried in his mother's arms that way since...since Redbeard. But Alfred seemed unsurprised. He simply returned to his chair and waited for them both to stop sobbing, turning over in his hands a stiff cream-colored envelope.

*   *   *   *

_MY DEAR BROTHER,_

_Try to remember, when you read this letter, that I was older than you were when they put Redbeard down. I was myself not entirely unaffected by his demise. But the look of sheer misery on your face as Daddy bore him out to the car is something I shall never forget. It was the anticipation, I inferred, that made your last parting so exquisitely painful--for you. Redbeard after all was as cheerful as a dog in the final stages of renal failure could have been. Consciousness is a curse._

_My death will be, as far as you are concerned, unanticipated. It is better that way. It will undoubtedly be unpleasant, but you will get it over all at once and the shock will fade in a week or two. For me, it is an inexpressible relief to know that I will be spared months of undignified and futile suffering. I am a vain and selfish man, and the accompanying discomfort and embarrassment would entirely overwhelm any benefit that I might be supposed to derive from the extended opportunity to come to grips with my mortality. I wish it to be known that Anthea is acting on my orders and with considerable reluctance. I have asked her not to inform me of the appointed time. It will make the crime scene more credible; and I do not relish the idea of knowing which day is to be my last._

_Now that you are reading this, Selkirk will have been exposed, and AGRA destroyed. For a few years, at least, there will be no need to skulk in the shadows. Please look after Mummy and Daddy. I trust John will look after you. My dearest Elizabeth can look after herself. She knows my intentions and approves of them entirely, though of course they cannot make her happy. I have never been more confident in her courage and integrity, nor have I ever admired her more._

_And finally, give my love to Rachel. When she is old enough to know her mother's story, tell her that her uncle Mycroft promises that there will be no more AGRA girls._

_Fondly,_

_Mycroft_

*   *   *   *

"So," said Dr. Helena Weston. "To be honest, I don't see this kind of family history every day."

John watched her drop onto her desk a stack of paper a half-inch thick, containing the questionnaires that he, Sherlock, and Harry had all filled out and sent to her at the beginning of the week. It was marked up with quite a bit of red ink, including circles and exclamation points and asterisks and double underlinings. Dr. Weston was in her early fifties, with kinky brown hair that had begun to turn iron-gray. A wine-stain birthmark was only partially concealed by her hairline. John found the heather gray jumper and the many, many rings on her unmanicured hands reassuring. It made him quite certain that Dr. Weston was not a current or former AGRA girl.

Harry was in the chair next to him, sneaking discreet glances at the animals. At first, you didn't notice them. But gradually you saw there was a little gray and white cat half-hidden behind the window curtain, a beanbag frog sitting by the doorstop, and what looked like some sort of dragon, minus a wing, perched on top of a cabinet. Most of them looked as if they had histories, and several of them had been mended more than once.

Harry had said very little on the way here, except to ask if John was sure he wanted her to come. Sherlock wouldn't come--he foresaw that Sherlock would never come to any of these meetings--and as Harry was their emergency back-up parent in case both of them were blown up one day, John felt Harry should be part of it.

"Which parts of this narrative does Rachel _not_ know?" Dr. Weston asked.

John and Harry looked at each other. Harry took a deep breath and began.

"She doesn't know that her mother ran me down with my own car," Harry said.

"She must," John returned.

"She knows Mary backed into some poor sod on a motorcycle. She doesn't know it was me."

"How did you explain the broken wrist?" John demanded.

"I'm a postmenopausal woman, John. I could break a wrist making a birthday cake."

"Oh rubbish."

"We're getting off task, John."

John shot an anxious look at Dr. Weston. She appeared to be enjoying the detour.

"She doesn't know about the dead AGRA girls buried in the sheep pens," John resumed.

"Also she doesn't know that she nearly got buried there herself," Harry said, closing her eyes and rubbing them with one hand.

"She what?" John demanded.

"Have you read Alexandra Griselda's statement?"

An arrangement had been reached whereby AGRA girls under the age of eighteen who were prepared to give evidence would be sent to group homes instead of prison, there to be acclimatized to civilian life before being released. John had not, so far, had the stomach to go through these statements himself, though Sherlock and Harry were reading them quite avidly. Most of the older AGRA girls had agreed to give statements and to testify in return for reduced sentences, though a few were so closely linked to specific high-profile assassinations that nobody could persuade the crown not to prosecute them. 

"I will now," John said.

"Alexandra's job title, apparently, was 'waifcatcher.' She searched for potential runaways, and--"

"Don't, Harry. Don't."

Harry stopped. There was a silence.

"I don't think Rachel knows exactly how Mycroft died or what for," Harry finally volunteered.

"No," John said. "No, she doesn't. She knows he died, of course, but we haven't told her about the...intrigue."

"Oh!" Harry said. "Rachel doesn't know that her mother shot Sherlock in the chest." 

Dr. Weston interrupted. "In the chest? There must be a scar?" she said. 

"Oh yes," John said. "Sherlock tells her it's an old pole-vaulting injury." 

Dr. Weston raised an eyebrow.  

"And Rachel doesn't know that John actually writes the Hecate Handful books," Harry added.

Dr. Weston turned her piercing gaze on John. "You're H. J. Switsom?"

John sighed. 

"I have a number of clients who are quite attached to those novels," said Dr. Weston. "When did you start writing them?"

"About five years ago," John said, despondently. "It started just as me...noodling about for fun. I never thought they would see the light of day. Now I wish they never had. I'm sure Mary--Agnes--Rachel's mother--could tell they were mine. That's probably where she got the idea of stalking Rachel at Hecate's Haven."

"Is that why you published them under a pseudonym?" said Dr. Weston. "So your ex-wife wouldn't know it was you?"

"Yes--"

"No, John," Harry interrupted. "It most certainly was not. You never once gave that as a reason. I've been at him for years to tell Rachel, but he won't--"

"I don't know why!" John cut in. "It's about an all-girls school, I suppose I thought people would think it was creepy if the author was a man. And I--I wanted Rachel to be able to read them, but she wouldn't if she knew I'd written them, right, who wants to read stories written by your Dad of all people--"

"Apparently, Rachel does," Dr. Weston replied, imperturbably. 

"Yes, but she doesn't know I wrote them," John said, feeling really quite uncomfortable. "It would spoil them for her if she did."

Harry was about to say something, but she stopped when she saw Dr. Weston sit up a bit straighter and fix John with her gaze.

"Tell me something," Dr. Weston said. "Can either of you remember a time in your childhood when you expressed affection toward your father, and he received it warmly and returned it kindly?"

There was a long silence.

"Should I have told Rachel that?" John finally said. One more thing he'd got wrong.

Dr. Weston shrugged. "I'm only pointing out that for several hours a day, over several years, during a time which both you and your partner have described as very difficult for your entire family, you voluntarily engaged yourself in hours of labor during which you attempted to understand the world from her point of view, and to create a better and richer world in which she could take refuge. Rachel has, I'm sure, benefited enormously from this labor of love. It just struck me, when you said you wanted her to read the books, that you went to an enormous amount of trouble in order to create the impression that your gift to her came from someone else. I wondered if perhaps you had often the experience, at a young age, of bringing love to someone and having it rejected."

At a young age; and perhaps in adulthood as well.

"I'm also noticing here, as I get the timeline sorted in my head," Dr. Weston said, tapping the paper, "that Rachel entered school during the same year in which your partner's brother was killed. Did the loss affect your partner emotionally?"

John blinked. He said, "Yes. Very much."

"It does sound from his questionnaire as if he has experienced clinical depression."

"He has," John replied.

"But was never treated for it," said Dr. Weston.

"No," John said, assuming that that Dr. Weston would not share his ideas about sex as a valid substitute for talk therapy.

"Has anyone ever told you," said Dr. Weston, with unexpected gentleness, "that oppositional behavior, volatility, anger, and recklessness can, in children Rachel's age, be symptoms of anxiety?"

"No," John said, slowly. 

"In Rachel's case they may not be," Dr. Weston said. "I can't be sure without seeing her. But both of her primary parents are engaged in difficult and unpredictable work. The sudden death of your partner's brother, whose job probably seems, to Rachel, very similar to your partner's, coinciding with your partner's withdrawal into depression and Rachel's first attempt to integrate into a group setting would, it seems to me, create a kind of perfect anxiety storm."

"That was five years ago," John said. "And she's been to four different schools."

"If her initial experience in school was negative--" Dr. Weston began.

"It was," Harry put in.

"--then that would generate even more anxiety when she moves to her next school. And so on."

"But Rachel's not anxious," said John. "She's fearless. She's brave. She never talks about being afraid of anything."

Dr. Weston closed up the family history and laid her hands flat on top of it. Somehow it seemed as if she were getting into sparring position.

"You're brave, Dr. Watson," she said. "Are there things you're afraid of?"

"Of course."

"Can you name them for me?"

They thronged his mind. Sherlock dying, Rachel dying, Harry dying, Rachel being taken away from him, Sherlock starting to use again, Harry starting to drink again, another major depression, lack of work, lack of money, there never being a place in the world for Rachel.

But John found that he could not actually name any of them. He only sat in his chair with his lips compressed and his face feeling very hot.

Harry was unable to completely suppress a chuckle.

"And your point is?" John said, a bit harshly.

Dr. Weston changed the subject. "Frankly, Dr. Watson, a school is always an institution and the purpose of an institution is always discipline."

Dr. Weston surely noticed that both Harry and he flinched slightly at the word.

"The school will always care more about getting compliance from your child than about actually helping or even educating your child. The school therefore will always address the undesired behavior, which is what matters to them, instead of the emotions causing it, which matter only to Rachel and people who actually love her. If the cause is anxiety, addressing the behavior is counterproductive. It simply creates more anxiety which produces more resistance and more disruptions and leads to more conflict. What therapy can do for Rachel," said Dr. Weston, "is create a low-stakes, safe, supportive place in which Rachel can allow these frightening feelings to surface, so that we can recognize them and respond to them. Rachel will learn how to let you and the other adults in her life know when she needs your help and you'll get better at giving it to her in ways that she can accept. Her anxiety should decrease, along with the symptoms. But you should know," she went on, "that a family is a system, and that as Rachel changes, you and your partner will be changing with her."

John felt a prickling at the back of his throat. It was the first time in years that he had heard an adult outside the family talk about Rachel changing as if they believed it might actually happen. He heard Harry's chair sliding back as she stood up. She turned to look at him.

"Hire her," Harry said.

"What?" John retorted.

"Hire her," Harry said. "You will not do better."

And Harry left the room. 

Dr. Weston seemed to be trying not to let John know she was amused.

John said, "I'm--I'm sorry. That was awkward."

"No worries," said Dr. Weston. "Awkward is my business."

John laughed. She gave off a companionable little chuckle.

"Do you trust your sister?" she said.

And now the tears were really threatening.

"I do," he said. "I do now. I do trust her."

Dr. Weston made no comments about protesting too much. She merely watched him struggle not to give way as he thought about all the times in his life that he had not been able to say that.

"So am I hired?" she ventured, at last.

A few tears leaked out around the edges of his laugh. 

"Yes. I mean. If you. If you think..."

She stood up and extended her hand. He took it.

"I do, Dr. Watson," she said. "Don't tell Rachel any of those things you just told me. It would increase her anxiety and not help her at all. Except for the Hecate Handful books. Definitely tell her about that."

Dr. Weston clapped her hands together, bouncing a bit on the balls of her feet. For the first time he saw in her a kind of inner goofiness that gave him great hope for the future.

"I mean, her Dad invented Chickwitch!" Dr. Weston exclaimed. "How cool is  _that?_ "

*   *   *   *

Lady Smallwood took her time before asking Robert to send Sherlock in.

She was apparently deeply absorbed in a semi-classified document when he stepped into her office, standing up opposite her desk, and waiting--silently but somehow insistently--for her to take notice of him. Lady Smallwood let him wait for nearly a minute, then glanced up as if previously unaware of his presence.

"Sherlock," she said. "Welcome. Do sit down."

"I'll stand, it it's all the same to you," he said, stiffly.

Lady Smallwood pushed her chair back slightly, and tilted the seat so that she could meet his eyes without craning her neck.

"What can I do for you, Sherlock?" she said, removing her reading glasses.

"I don't require that you do anything," Sherlock replied. "I simply wish to apologize for some of the things that passed between us during our last interview."

Of course he was referring to that awful night in 221B, though in fact they had interacted several times since then. Circumstances had made that unavoidable; but Sherlock had preserved the same kind of icy reserve with which he now regarded her. A tribute, perhaps, to the memory of his brother. Sherlock would have noted, naturally, her aubergine suit jacket and deduced that Lady Smallwood was making the transition out of full mourning. He was perhaps the only man in Britain who had noticed when she began wearing it. 

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," Lady Smallwood said wearily. "I should not have said that Rachel was not your child."

"Why  _did_ you say it?" Sherlock returned. His voice was neutral but the speed of his response betrayed his hurt.

"I was searching for a way to end the conversation," she said.

"You certainly accomplished that objective."

"I could not offer you my assistance, Sherlock--not without discussing it first with Anthea, and there was no time for that. Your intervention threatened to scuttle a covert operation on which she and I had been collaborating for years. As it is, we may lose some of the more marginal members of Selkirk's gang due to the precipitation with which your rescue mission forced us to act."

"You suggested I abandon Rachel," Sherlock insisted. "To protect your mission."

"Yes, Sherlock. But even if you had known about that mission, you could never have done that. I knew that."

Mycroft could have. They both thought it. Each saw the other recognizing the truth of it.

"Mycroft adored your daughter," Lady Smallwood said. "It made no difference at all to him that they were not biologically related."

She watched Sherlock's eyes travel over her outfit, noting all the details, making all the deductions. She let him do it.

"In his letter to me," Sherlock said, "he says that you approved of his intentions entirely."

That did burn a little bit.

"I conceded the validity of the logic behind them. I did not approve of the actions he took. I did not want him to die alone on the floor of his office. I wanted to be with him when he left us. I wanted to hold him."

She felt the tears inside, but they wouldn't turn into anything Sherlock could see.

"He saw that desire as a pardonable but sentimental self-indulgence, and it did not affect his decision," she said. "Nor would Mycroft ever have admitted that his own fear of illness was as much a motivator as his desire to make his death useful."

As she watched Sherlock's reaction, it occurred to him that she was at last giving him what he had come for: some indication that she too had been disregarded, that she too had been forced to bear the pain of his loss without her consent. 

"It is difficult to love a man who refuses to acknowledge the primacy of human emotion," said Lady Smallwood. "I can only say that it is also highly rewarding."

Sherlock nodded. "Thank you, Lady Smallwood." He gave an awkward little half-nod, half-bow, and finally said, "If I can ever be of service to you...in any way at all...do not hesitate to call upon me."

Suppressing her amusement, she said, "Thank you, Sherlock. The same goes for you and your family, of course."

She rose from the chair. Gratefully, he accepted this as the end of the interview, and made a hasty and inelegant exit.

So unlike his brother; and yet at the same time, they had so much in common that it must have been like losing a twin. For her, the loss was beginning to become bearable, now that Mycroft's work had been accomplished. She hoped it was happening for Sherlock too. But age made some things easier to accept. She had, she hoped, many useful and exciting years of public service ahead of her. But there would be no other romance. After Mycroft, there was nothing.

*   *   *   *

In a Pret a Manger near Trafalgar Square, John watched Harry toying with an evidently disappointing chicken tikka sandwich. 

"Something put you off it?" John said, with his mouth full of croissant.

"No," she said. "I just realized...this is the place we used to have our clandestine meetings, back when we were planning the whole..."

"Magnussen thing," John sighed.

He chewed in silence for a while.

"There's always one level up," Harry finally said. "I mean we thought, by getting to Magnussen, that we were going right to the source of the trouble. Turns out he wasn't the source, not even close to it. It was AGRA. And Mycroft. And...fucking...Dad."

She shook her head. John couldn't help laughing with her.

"Northern Ireland in 1982," John said. 

"Fucking Dad," Harry added, for emphasis.

"No wonder Mum fought with him."

"Should have been a clue." Harry had gone back to her sandwich. "Only thing that could have made her stand up to that man was him going over to the six counties to make things even worse for the Catholics."

"I always wondered," John began, and then stopped.

"Wondered what?" Harry had scented horror, somehow.

"Why they married," he said. "What they saw in each other. Young English lawyer and this Catholic girl from Manchester who's come down to London to wait tables in a pub. And Mum never talked about her father, and Gran wouldn't talk about him either except to say he was a nice young boy from Derry. You don't think...it was...you know...strategic?"

The sandwich dropped onto the plate again. Harry put her head in her hands.

"Oh no, John," she groaned. "Oh, let's not go there."

"Well I can't help it, now," he said. "I go back over every memory I have of him and I'm going there all the time. I mean if he was willing to basically arrange a marriage for me..."

"You are forgetting," Harry said, "that they were both young and  _really_ good-looking."

John slurped up more ice tea through his plastic straw. "True," he said. "There is that."

"Let's just Occam's Razor that and assumed they just did what thousands of straight people did then and still do now," Harry said. "Got married because they were hot for each other and then realized they'd made a huge mistake. They're both dead, after all, and it really doesn't matter now, so I'm just going to believe whatever makes me least freaked out."

And really, John agreed that as icky as imagining your parents dying to have sex with each other was, it was less upsetting than most of the alternative theories.

"About the box," Harry said, tentatively.

John felt a flash of unexpected anger. "So I didn't forget where I'd hidden it."

"No," Harry said.

"That wanker stole it," John said.

"Evidently."

"What FOR?"

"I don't know, John," Harry said, exasperated. "Parents spy on their children all the time, you don't have to be a triple-secret-illegal-assassin-trainer-in-the-making to do that. But he could have done the decent thing and put it back where he found it."

But that would have required decency.

"Do you remember what you kept in it?" Harry said.

John shook his head. "You said it was empty when you found it."

Harry sighed. "Yes."

John just lifted up his hands, asking wordlessly, _why on earth_?

"Maybe he thought that by emptying the box, he was getting rid of all the things about you that bothered him," Harry hazarded. "Maybe he thought in some voodoo sort of way that if he took all that out and filled it up with his own junk, you would become what he wanted you to be."

John snorted. "I think Dr. Weston would find that unconvincing."

"I know, I know, very pop-psych, but you know it was the seventies."

"But then shouldn't it have been full?" John pressed. "Unless...what he wanted was for me to be empty?"

Harry started tearing up the edges of the bread in her sandwich.

"Oscar Wilde once said," Harry said, "that a woman is a sphinx without a secret. It's occurred to me that you could say the same about our illustrious progenitor. All this mystery and we finally found him and...AGRA is supposed to be keeping all these secrets but there's no _truth_  there. There's nothing _inside_ AGRA except more secrecy. That's how I've been thinking about Dad, since this happened. He gave up so much of his life to everyone else's secrets that in the end he had none of his own. He stole something that was yours and he made it about himself. A locked box, empty inside."

They sat with this for a moment.

"So all this time," John said, tentatively, "you were really his favorite."

Boy, that made her angry.

"Listen, John," Harry said, waving the sandwich at him. "Whatever it was that he meant by 'love,' I wish he had just kept it away from me. From both of us. I don't think he had a favorite. I think he was about equally shitty to both of us and that it just took different forms. And look what he did. Abandoned his real daughter, then got himself surrounded by other girls who have no choice but to obey him. Fuck him. Fuck whatever it was that he wanted from us. We're free now." She picked up her mango smoothie. "To being an orphan," she said.

"To being an orphan," he echoed.

*   *   *   *

A balding John Watson did not look any more appetizing on the other side of a plexiglass window than it did in vivo. Then again, Mary knew, she was no prize either. The acid-green jumpsuit was exactly the worst shade anyone could possibly have dressed her in. In the three weeks since her arrival her dark roots had become too prominent to camouflage. As he took his seat on the visitor's side, Mary thought of what a relief it was, really, not to have to pretend to be attracted to him, not to have to make him believe that she was attractive.

John sat, as always, as if someone had shoved a poker up his bum; and his facial expression was like something you'd see on a serial killer. Not a promising beginning.

"Well," he said. His voice, passed through the mic and speaker to her side, acquired an extra little buzz of irritation. "I'm here."

Mary tried to remember why she had asked him to come. It had been part of some kind of plan she had formed after first being sent here, but she found now that she'd lost the thread of it, and couldn't work out how to pick it up again. It hardly seemed worth the effort. 

Rachel. It must have been something to do with Rachel. 

"How's Rachel?" Mary said.

"Fine," he replied.

That was going to be all, evidently.

"No damage done then," she said.

He turned his head away, locking his jaw, holding back whatever it was that he desperately wanted to say.

"I never intended to hurt her, John," she said. "I only wanted to be with my own child. It was your father who really fucked things up for her. For all of us."

That brought his eyes back to her quite quickly. 

"You brought a child with a history of defiant behavior into a place where disobedience was punished by death," John said. "What did you expect would happen?"

"It was her first day," Mary said. "Given time--"

"What's hilarious about you," John interrupted, "is how banal you really are. You and my father both. For all the secret underground lairs and creepy assassination machines you're no different from every old busybody who's ever come across Rachel having a tantrum in a Sainsbury's and told us we shouldn't stand for any of her nonsense. You made the same mistake that the whole bloody world makes over Rachel. You saw how bright and clever and spirited she is and you saw what a holy terror she was and you thought, they  _must_ be doing it wrong. If  _I_ had that child to myself for a few days, I'd soon sort her out. I hear it every day, all over London. Just tell her to stop. Just be firm. Just be consistent. Just put your foot down. Just don't listen to her. Just tell her you're the parent and she's the child. Just stop letting her walk all over you. Everyone  _else_ is so bloody certain that they know exactly how to make her behave. Well with or without my father, you'd have found out very soon just how very fucking wrong all of you are. You surveilled her in public and hacked into the school evaluations and all the rest of it and you thought she was a chip off the old psychopathic block. But that wasn't Rachel. That was just shite spouted by people who have no idea what she's really like and are too pissed off at her to find out. If you'd known her the way we do, you'd never have tried it."

He was right about that much.

"Does she ever ask about me?" Mary said, carefully. It was hard to conceal the strength of the longing to see her again, to hear her voice. It had been bad before she'd met Rachel; now it was even worse.

"Occasionally," John said.

Mary's heart leapt. "Does she want to see me?"

"No."

"No?" Mary demanded. "Just like that?"

"No, she does not want to see you."

"But she must have questions," Mary said, desperately. "She must be curious about me."

John shrugged. 

"I find she isn't, really," he said. "You see, when you started stalking her, she didn't know anything about you. By the way, Mary, we've recovered your correspondence with Rachel as BroomHilde1135. I can't read more than a few lines of it at a time without wanting to set something on fire; but Sherlock and Sally Donovan are going through it with a fine-toothed comb. Sally says it's a masterpiece of its kind. You did such a good job of undermining her trust in us and inspiring resentment and hatred for us. So congratulations. You win the internet predator prize for 2024."

Good God, what a fuss. Trust John to take that personally. Obviously the effects had not been permanent.

"But now, of course," John said, "Rachel knows that you stalked her, lied to her, abducted her, imprisoned her, and exposed her to lethal dangers. She knows that you tried to make her believe that you were the only adult in the world who loved her. She knows that you wanted her parents dead. She knows that you thought killing her grandfather was more important than getting the children out of that deathtrap. I think she feels that she knows you well enough now."

He seemed to have no more to say to her. She found she had nothing left to say to him. Even asking if Rachel could perhaps visit her sometimes seemed pointless. More awkward and hostile conversations through a plexiglass shield. It would do her no good.

"If that should change any time over the next...fifty years or so," John said, standing up, "she'll know where to find you."

That smug bastard. Walking away and just relishing it. Leaving her stuck in this dive, casting her pearls before swine. She'd be ruling this place like a queen at the end of her first month. But it would never be the same. There would never be another place on earth as wonderful as AGRA.

*   *   *   *

Half an hour after Rachel had finally fallen asleep, John was still in the sitting room, still on his laptop. Sherlock felt that this needed to change.

"More Hecate Handful?" Sherlock inquired, looking up from the sofa.

John stared into the screen, and sighed.

"No," he said.

Sherlock waited. If you pushed John too much he would just take the laptop with him and stalk off. 

"Actually," John finally said, "I'm going through the intake records."

It made one almost feel guilty for having frisky thoughts. Anthea had of course seen to it that everything essential was offloaded from the AGRA computers before the flood. This included the records kept about all the girls--when they came in, where from, what names they'd been given, and when they 'went off active duty.' John had taken it upon himself to try to identify the bodies that had been dug out of the six sheep pens located in the six farms containing those six greenhouses. That one tiny skull was haunting him more than everything else they had seen in their entire time together. 

"You know I found Irene's," John said.

Sherlock sat up. "Really."

"Doesn't say what her mother's name was, or anything," John said, wearily. "Her given name was Martha."

"Martha," Sherlock repeated, with a little shudder. 

"You know, I..." John gestured, exasperated, at the screen. "I'll be honest, Sherlock, even before she tried to kill us I did not like Irene Adler. But you look at this and...she was just a little girl that her mother either wouldn't or couldn't take care of. A chubby little girl named Martha, thrown into that shark tank. With no one to come and rescue her." He sighed. "And so was Mary, at some point. But...feeling bad for them as they were  _then_...doesn't make them any less impossible  _now,_ does it?"

And instead of banging the table, or punching the computer screen, or doing any of the many other things he might easily have done even two months previously to express this infuriating mixture of anger, hatred, frustration, and pity, John just sat there looking at the data on the screen, and let himself drift in the ocean of discomfort and confusion. He was beginning to figure out, perhaps, that sometimes struggling just made you and everyone around you drown faster.

Sherlock got up. He walked over to John's chair, putting his chin on John's shoulder, slipping his arms around John's chest from behind. John turned off his laptop and shut it. 

Half an hour later, when they were both entwined comfortably in bed, John said, "So...you said your parents had a letter for you from Mycroft."

Sherlock looked up at the ceiling. John's head was resting against Sherlock's bare chest now, right over his heart where John liked to be. Sherlock stroked his thinning hair. One day, John would be as bald as his father had been. It would be all right. He would be able to carry it off.

Sherlock told John what the letter said. Verbatim. 

John let out a long, slow breath, and wrapped himself more closely around Sherlock's body.

"He thought you would be over the shock," John murmured, "in a couple of  _weeks_."

The tears came to Sherlock slowly, silently, without significant pain. They ran gently down his cheeks, like water from a snowmelt, disturbing no one.  

"They don't get it," John said. "They don't know what it's like being the youngest. They're always more important to you than they think they are." Sherlock felt John's eyelashes flutter against his skin. "I mean Harry crawls into a bottle, stays there for a decade, probably never once thinks it might bother me, that I might miss her. Shows up at the wedding for about a minute and then walks away. Crawls back out of the bottle...sometime afterwards...and doesn't even tell me. I show up at her flat out of my mind in the middle of the night and it's just like oh, there you are John, how about a cup of tea? No sense of...what not having her there did to...I mean..."

"None," Sherlock agreed.

"Doesn't even know she was dead to me for almost a whole day," John said, closing his eyes. "Not telling her. No point. Wasn't her fault. Still."

They lay together, listening to each other's breathing.

"John," Sherlock finally ventured.

"Mm?"

"Did you ever wonder why...well...why a man who actively avoids human contact, leads a life no other human being could stand to share, likes to fill his fridge with body parts, and has sundry other habits best pursued in a solitary environment was looking for a flatmate in the first place?"

"Money," John murmured.

"Yes, but...I've been thinking...you know my parents gave me an allowance, for a while."

John's eyes opened.

"I mean they called it seed money. To set up my consulting detective business. And then one day Mycroft showed up and told me they'd decided to stop it. Force me to become an adult and so on."

John lifted his head and fixed his rather troubled eyes on Sherlock's.

"And so I said to myself well they can stuff it, I'll support myself from now on, only of course I had to have someone to help with the rent, and..."

John groaned.

"You see where I'm going with this," Sherlock said, anxiously.

"You wonder whether Mycroft somehow deliberately set us up in order to get to my father," John said.

"A bit. Yes. Well. It is on my mind quite a lot actually."

John laid his head back down. He slipped one hand down under the sheet, traveling along Sherlock's belly.

"Allow me to get out Occam's Razor," he said, "and nip that right in the bud."

Sherlock let out a sigh of relief.

"Mycroft was just Mycroft," John said, pushing himself on top of Sherlock's body, propping himself up on his forearms. "Not God Almighty. Some things just happen, Sherlock. You and me. Just happened. Because of fate or chance or luck or Cupid or our own signals just beaming themselves into the night until they reached each other or whatever. But not Mycroft. This is not about him." 

John leaned down to kiss him.

Occam's Razor. Not an instrument Sherlock had ever handled willingly. But maybe, at this moment, the right tool for the job. 

END CHAPTER


	27. EPILOGUE

**RACHEL'S BLOG, ENTRY ELEVEN**

It's been a while since I posted here so I should tell you that I am no longer nine and a quarter. I am ten years old today! I am posting this from my ex-aunt Janine's house in Sussex where we are spending the week-end. I had a party in London first, well a party and a half if you count the party I had at school which is really just bringing a cake to lunchtime and having everyone sing for you. I'm at the New Circle School again but it's all right this time. I have a new teacher named Margaret and she's very strict but this is good because you know where you stand with her and also she is very fair so her strictness does not really have any meanness in it so it is something I can respect. Also Margaret really likes maths and she also has a feature where any day you want you can bring in a poem and stick it up on the corkboard and at reading time people will read it with you and talk about it. I told my Aunt Harriet about this and I asked her what her favorite poem was. She said currently she was reading a lot of Sylvia Plath. She said that as if it was meant to be a kind of joke but she saw I didn't get it and it was all right. Then she went out and got me A Child's Golden Treasury of Verse. I'm memorizing "The Raven," because it's brilliant and I want to have it in my head for any time I want to listen to it. Lolo says that he is working on a violin thing he can play while I recite it. They have a Halloween talent show at the New Circle School and I am getting ready early because Emily and Noor are my best mates now and they are just nuts about ghosts and witches and things. They are big Hecate Handful fans but I haven't told them that my Dad writes the books. I like for that to be my secret. It's a nice happy secret, not like most secrets.

Emily and Noor are brilliant but the absolute best thing about this year is grandparents. You will no doubt have deduced that I am not speaking of my Dad's father who is dead now. No, the absolute best thing is that Lolo's parents had been sick but then they got better and now they can talk to me and play with me and Gramps will actually crawl under a table with a flashlight and play architectural dig with me even though Gammy pretends to be cross and says if you find you can't get up again, Alfred, don't look to me for assistance. But he always does get up again because eventually he has to become the mummy and stand up and sort of stagger round the table groaning while I run away from him. Gammy doesn't like Archtiectural Dig or Castle in Transylvania either, but she is teaching me how to solve for X and do all sorts of other things with maths. They don't come up to London or down to Sussex, though, I go to their little cottage instead.

I love my ex-aunt Janine's house. It's big enough for me and my dads and Harry and not really Greg and Molly but they came down for the weekend all the same and are going to stay at a B&B. It looked for a bit as if my ex-aunt Janine was to become an ex-ex-aunt but Aunt Harriet says everyone came to their senses in time. I said one time that it seemed a shame they should be just friends when Aunt Harriet is so handsome and Janine is so beautiful but Aunt Harriet said there is no 'just' about it sweetheart, at my time of life you treasure any friendship God sends you. I agree. It is brilliant having friends. For instance when there is a thing you really want to say but you know Margaret would give you the stink-eye for saying it, you can just whisper it to your friend and that is almost as good and much less dangerous. Emily is a reading wizard but she is not so handy with the maths and so she sometimes comes to the flat after school and Lolo helps her learn things. Whenever my Dad sees Lolo at the table getting Emily to do her sums he gets this little smile on his face and you can sort of see beams of light coming out of his eyes, it's a bit weird but kind of sweet.

This is my first birthday in double digits and my first birthday at the house in Sussex and so far it is the best birthday yet. It is not raining at all and Harry made leg of lamb with mint sauce and there was a cake with icing. The grown-ups spent a lot of time talking about the new prime minister, but I mainly just ran around on the lawn with Elfanant. Elfanant is a big furry golden retriever who lives with us now in the flat even though every time my Dad sees him practically he goes on about how it is mad to have a dog that size in London. When he does that I go over and put my arms around Elfanant and put my face into the big ruff round his neck and breathe in his doggy smell and that is all it takes to get my Dad to stop talking about how if you absolutely have to have a dog in a flat in London it had better be one of those obnoxious little terriers. I think my Dad does that because Sherlock came home with Elfanant one day without asking him first. But he had no home to go back to because his owners were dead, so my Dad let us keep him. Elfanant doesn't get to be off the lead much in London so he loves it in Sussex, he just runs from one end of my ex-aunt Janine's lawn to the other and he is the happiest thing on four feet. After dinner when the sun was setting I pestered my ex-Aunt Janine until she agreed to sing. She said I don't do children's birthday parties, Rachel, but for you I will make an exception. Lolo got his violin out. My ex-Aunt Janine sings this song that I love that starts  _Come away O human child from the waters and the wild_. She sings it beautifully but she doesn't do it often because it makes my Aunt Harry cry. But she sang it for me and Lolo played the violin and everyone else got very quiet and the twilight was purple and there was a breeze just rippling the grass and everything was absolutely perfect for about ninety seconds. It is a shame things don't stay perfect for long, but ninety seconds is actually quite long for a perfect moment.

There's a big hammock in my ex-aunt Janine's yard and after Janine sang her song my dads decided to test it because it's new. They are still in it even though it's dark now. My Aunt Harriet says they've probably fallen asleep and we should leave them there and see if they get rained on, and meanwhile she can do bedtime. I prefer bedtime of course when my Dads do it but Aunt Harriet is all right too. 

She was tucking me into bed last night too because my dads went for an extremely long walk after dinner and while she was turning off the light I said, Aunt Harriet, is my mother ever going to get better?

And she sat down on the edge of the bed and said, _what do you mean by get better, sweetheart?_

And I said, now she's not in that place any more, will she start wanting to be good to people instead of wanting to lie to them and hurt them?

Aunt Harriet scooted onto the bed and when I leaned up against her she put an arm around me and said, I don't think so, sweetheart. Not in this quantum universe, anyway.

Helena basically said the same thing when I asked her, but I wanted to hear it from Aunt Harriet too. My Dad still doesn't like to talk to me about my mother but he doesn't mind now when my Aunt Harriet does. I said, do you think there could be some other quantum universe where my mother was all better?

Aunt Harriet said, I'm sure there are, sweetheart. She said, we live in this one, Rachel, but it's good to remember there could be others out there. Other mes and other yous and other Johns and other Marys and other Sherlocks. She said, but this quantum universe is my favorite, and do you know why? It's because it's the one you're in. And then she went downstairs and I heard her talking to my dads and I tried to eavesdrop from bed but I fell asleep.

I think that is a nice birthday gift, to let someone know that you are their favorite quantum universe. I don't know who any of you are, really, except for some of you who have been posting in the moderated comments, which thank you for doing that I know my Dad is a very restrictive moderator and it can be a bit of a pain. But being able to blog for you has helped me incorporate this extraordinary experience so thank you for reading it. It's the end of the story but it's not the end of the blog though. I am certain that I will have more extraordinary experiences to incorporate soon.

THE END


End file.
